Northwest Airlines must go to seed

This has been the trip from hell. Nothwest is the WORST airline EVER. And this thing they call an airport?

UGH!

Can you believe I am still NOT in San Jose?

First off, the flight was delayed yesterday 4 hours due to weather conditions. Ok. I can live with that. But the airline, instead of taking measures to ensure people got to where they were going or stayed in NYC until further notice, they took us hostage in the airplane FOR FOUR HOURS.

Yes people.

I was with hundreds of other passengers for fours hours on a Northwest Airlines airplane. Four hours which they refused to find a way to get us out of the airplane. Four hours they refused to get people to a non NWA gate so they could be at least out of an airplane and on the ground. Four hours which they decided were necessary so they would not have to go through the extra cost of customer service.

Not only that. The flight was supposed to leave at 5:30pm. It's 9:45pm and instead of getting to a gate as instructed, the pilot decides to depart to Minneapolis.

The asshole says something to the effect : "We could wait another hour and a half for one of hours gates to open up or we could fly. We're flying."

Hurrah, right? No.

You see, we get to this wretched airport and ALL CONNECTING FLIGHTS ARE EITHER CANCELLED OR HAVE LEFT. And with a sweet innocent look on their faces the crew kept telling us : "Well, you can sleep on a chair until 9am tomorrow".

Excuse me?

After 2 hours and with the prospect of flying through a storm or tornado, I asked to get out of the plane. Several people asked to be deplane. Not only did the bitch stewardesses look at me and tell me, "well, if you are having problems, we can ask someone to sedate" but they think it's ok to stay on the fucking tarmac for 4 hours. Oh well, you know, to have you get out of the plane, everybody would have to be let go and that would cost us.

Excuse me.

I was so fury I literally cried. Here the airline thinks it's acceptable to take people hostage "due to the weather". The parks service thinks it's statistically ok if a child dies under a tree "due to the weather". We have a government that thinks it's statistically OK to have hundreds of people die and have tens of thousands of people displace and indigent after Hurricane Katrina because, you know, it's "due to the weather".

So we get here after being taken hostage by Northwest Airlines and now they want people to sleep on the floor of the airport because, you know, they don't really have to be held accoutable "due to the weather".

And motherfucker Americans let themselves be walked over like that. Pregnant women. Nursing women. Elderly couples and hundreds of silent lambs let themselves be walked all over last night thanks the incompetency of Nortwest Airlines.

I. WAS. FURIOUS.

I asked for a supervisor. I told the woman, look, I know the weather was bad but lord, I could have stayed in NYC and left in the morning. Now you're asking me to either sleep on the floor of the airport pay hundreds of dollars for an hotel room when I could have been deplane in NYC?

The woman gave me a hotel voucher. Mind you, it looked like the backdrop of those porno American Apparel ads, but still, it was a hotel voucher.

So if you bitch about it, you get it. Out of their own volition though, they would have never offered people a decent place to stay.

Northwest Airlines filed for bankruptcy recently. I hope they go to hell.


liza's picture

| | |

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Daniel's picture

NW

I just booked my coming flight to the DF with NW a couple of days ago... Trouble is that I think you are right, or is it that all the airlines behave like that? I have my stories from hell with Airfrance last month across Europe and they were this kind of frustrating.
Best regards,
Daniel


Soylent Green's picture

Bankrupt Bitches

Tara Parks here.

airlines in general suck. in April, Aer Lingus was a nightmare. there was no lingus on board anywhere. but seriously, they know that we have to fly and have little power once we are on the runway. i say that you tell as many people as you can---this blog was a good place to start.

have a safe trip. i know it is a hard one.


Jeffrey Langstraat's picture

We don't call it Northworst for nothing

It truly is an awful airline. And what makes it even worse is how much the taxpayers of Minnesota have basically had to subsidize all that shittiness.


Aaron Pearson's picture

they'll get their due

Liza, you're experience isn't isolated, but I totally sympathize. I think when we were getting cheap airfares, then we could say we get what we pay for, but now that routine 3-hr flights cost $500, we expect something more. Ultimately, Southwest and others like them are going to destroy NWA. For those of us in the Twin Cities, it will mean fewer direct flights. So be it.

My wife just booked a couple of $500+ (each) seats to Portland - her and our three year old. For that much $$$, can Northwest say they can sit together? No, that would be no-brainer customer service. It just goes on and on.

Jeffrey, I agree we shouldn't be subsidizing them - seems a poor use of government resources.


congomaster's picture

I had a tranfer from

I had a tranfer from northwest to their flying partner KLM, KLM used to be excellent since they joined with northwest they really stink. Northwest has the philosophy of traeting thier customers like shit. I remember waiting in line at amsterdam for 3 hours in a line that had about 30 people in it. There were 4 people at the counters and they just kept talking to each other and taking breaks two at a time after the line build up. After 3 hours I get to the front with 15 minutes to baord the plane and they aask me why I waited so long to get a boarding pass. I was so frustrated that I couldnt even think of an answer. So I ran from one end of the airport to the other and the lady at the gate told me there was no seat, this is just a boarding pass that tells us that you are supposed to be on the flight and have to wait till everyone boards the plane to see where we can put you. I finally got a seat, but with the wait and running around, it made a trip from hell.


Gold Digger's picture

Hm

It doesn't seem like you travel much. That just happens. It's always just happened, from time to time. Bring a magazine or something, or just try to relax.


JJ Ross's picture

What Complacent Crap

and all too familiar as an ultimately futile effort by the status quo to shut up and shut down change.

I personally prefer something along the lines of Robert Kennedy (doesn't matter if he WAS just quoting Shaw, because he lived it and made it his own, too)

Wikipedia:

Though Kennedy stated that he was quoting George Bernard Shaw when he said this, he is often thought to have originated the expression, which actually paraphrases that of Shaw in his play Back To Methuselah : “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?".

Of course, for those who can't even ask "why" there is always "shut up." Not much of a wikipedia quote to aspire to having listed under one's own name -- and Gold Digger was known for blogging "SHUT UP!" -- guess that explains the alias? . . .


Tara Parks's picture

Damn ,You Missed the Whole Point....

...didn't you?


Soylent Green's picture

this is meant for Gold

this is meant for Gold Finger, not jj.

---Tara


Visit our sponsors

Fill up our coffee fund

BlogAds

Visit our sponsors

Who's online

There are currently 3 users and 1164 guests online.

Online users

Get our Digestifs du jour

Nibble daily on our brainy goodness with our daily syndication digest. You'll receive an email with a list and links to the previous day's posts.



Powered by FeedBlitz

culturekitchens

The Publisher
Liza Sabater

Daily servings of political dissent
culturekitchen

Grassroots News and
Activism for New Yorkers

Daily Gotham

Feminist Bloggers
Network

BlogSheroes

A new kind of vouyerism
Voogling

Art + Code + Philosophy
Potatoland.blog

Got any dirt, tips, leads or money for us? Then drop us a line or two at editors [at] culturekitchen [dot] com or use our general contact form to reach everybody in the editorial team ASAP.


Member's articles and stories

More stories

Words to live by


The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy," from a July 2006 column urging commentator Bill Moyers to run for president.


— Molly Ivins, (August 30, 1944 – January 31, 2007)
Quotes and quips from Molly Ivins | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle


Subscribe Buttons

Feed IconGoogleDeliciousYahoo!BloglinesNewsgatorMSNFeedsterAOLFurlRojoNewsburstPluckFeedFeedsAdd KinjaMultiRSSrMailRSSFwdBlogarithmSimplify