I am planning to fly out of DTW on a Friday using Northwest. Has anyone taken the early morning non-stop flight with Northwest? I have heard a few people on the board say that they avoid Northwest and I am wondering why. Should I be concerned about booking this flight? Thank you, EB
In that part of the world, Northwest Air is referred to as Northworst Air, parly because they have a lock on the terminal at the big airport, partly because they spent a lot of their customer's time and money breaking the union of their mechanics, partly because of the age of their fleet, and mostly because they approach business with the same outdated arrogance that characterizes much (if not most of) Detroit business, in particular the American automtive OEMs there. More details on Northworst can be found at: http://www.northworstair.org/ http://groups.msn.com/USBankComplaints/usbankandnorthwestair.msnw http://www.exit109.com/~gosta/norwest.sht If I was going to recommend a single carrier to go to Cancun from Detroit, it would be Spirit (for the opposite of all the reasons mentioned above). There is also charter called Funjet charter that does Cancun from there and also (I believe) USA 3000 in case economy is a prime driver. PS Noted on another post that you had one night you had to find a room for and wanted cheap and safe - the Ramada downtown is OK if you want to be downtown, but if it were me, I'd spend the night on Isla Mujeres. It's cheap, it's safe, and unless you were planning on going there anyway (or unless you're going for business), it adds a really nice touch to your trip.
I am scared to click on any of those links!!!! I am scared to death to fly anyway. :cry: :cry: Right now they are the only airline that has a non stop flight. EB
I think the main problem with Northworst is their percieved attitude and the age of the fleet -- which translates into smaller seats, less leg room, noisier planes, but NOT into concerns re safety, on time performance, or luggage handling. According to http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm Northworst 7th best in safety out of 87 airlines tablulated, so you'll probably get there and back OK. As far as on-time arrival and such there's the Airline Quality Rating, such as the one provided at: http://www.aqr.aero/pressreleases/AQR2007.pdf which ranks NWA in the #5 position. Not bad at all. And as far as your luggage goes - NWA is second best only to Jet Blue http://seniortravel.suite101.com/article.cfm/do_you_trust_best_airline_polls so if you can deal with the cramped conditions and the noise, it would appear that you and your luggage will make it there and back safe, sound, and in a fairly predictable manner. Hope that helps - have a Great Time in Cancun
I had a business in that area that required me to fly in and out of there a lot, at least for the first few (say 8 to 10) years. Sold the business (just in time, too - Detroit isn't what it used to be), but still find myself spending time in and around there, which is predicted to taper off as my core business interests move further and further west. And you - what's your story?
I live about an hour from Detroit and I know that this State is going downhill. Comerica is leaving and going to Texas. Detroit is #1 in Home Foreclosures and probably will be for a long time. My story is... I love to travel and I hate to FLY so I drug myself and buckle in. What did Northwest do to their Mechanics???
Hey - move with them. Texas has some very nice parts. Dallas, San Antonio without question, Houston not so much but the Galveston Bay area is sweet, South Padre... And they've got to be going somewhere like that, so that's not so bad. My take on it is that the contract time came up for the mechanics union, they didn't settle, and the mechincs went on strike. Apparently NWA opted to hire non-union mechanics and basically put the union out of a job. Not sure what happened after that, but the reason that it contributed to NWA's poor reputation was the 'meanspirited' nature of the way it was all handled (forcing their customers to walk through picket lines rather than allowing them to substitute other carriers) but not anything that detracted from air safety.
Maybe knowing this will help you relax a little. First - larger airplanes are, by far, the safer craft. Did you ever notice that most incidents involving large airplanes are connected with a collision with something else, ususally on the ground or in the air. Very (very) few just drop out of the sky. There's a reason for that. The large craft are designed such that they can't fall out of the sky, even if they wanted to. Really skillful pilots are sometimes irked in that regard because as a result, the planes are far less manuverable than they might otherwise be. But it's in this way that the plane is kept from EVER doing something that might endanger the passengers or those below. If you can handle the bumps and sideways flight of a small plane, you should be able to rest quite soundly on the larger ones.
