Northwest Airlines Doesn’t Care
I’m sure that there are still some good employees left at Northwest Airlines, but the ongoing labor battles seem to have taken a toll on the morale and attitudes of the their flight attendants.
I took a Northwest flight from Chicago to Minneapolis on business a few weeks ago. On the way back, I was in the very last row. This wasn’t really a big deal to me since the flight itself is less than an hour and I had a good book.
As we started to taxi, I started getting dripped on. In fact, everyone in the last two rows was getting soaked. I looked at the flight attendant right behind me and asked her what was pouring out on us and should we be concerned. She replied that it was condensation build-up from the air conditioning. As I looked at the side vents for the last 10 rows of the plane, there were paper towels shoved into the vents. This was not exactly the mechanical fix that gave me confidence in the overall safety of the plane.
When I asked the same flight attendant if this was a problem only with this plane or the entire fleet of DC-9 planes, she told me that it was a problem with the entire fleet. I asked her if she had ever reported the problem, and she replied that she had never reported it because it’s a problem with all of the planes and wasn’t worth her time to report.
Yikes…. Can’t help but love a flight attendant who takes such pride in her company. Do you think Northwest Airlines has some serious problems?
September 7th, 2007 at 4:44 am
The True Cost of Cheap Labor. I think that all of those people that want the “Cheapest” ticket they can get, should also find the cheapest Surgeon they can find, when they have their next surgery. $49.99 for Brain Surgery, Always on Time, and they hardly ever lose a patient, as long as the surgeon has had his morning Beer before he starts his day!
September 7th, 2007 at 4:53 am
You are correct that the cheapest doesn’t always mean the best.
What really makes sense here is to find the win-win scenario for both Northwest as a company, and the employees. Working out the labor problems themselves with help with morale and attitude.
With this as a given, it seems that the problems with Northwest go much deeper than employee versus management strife. For it to be considered okay for a model of plane to be fixed with paper towels shoved in the vents tells me a little about the currrent Northwest culture.
September 16th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
While the towells in the vent trick will work in a pinch, the preferred method would be servicing the water seperators located in the aft accessory section at the top of the fuselage; which I would do IF I still worked for NWA, but alas, it is not to be. My 21 years of aircraft maintenance experience has “left the building” never to return. My blood, sweat and tears went into every DC9 in the NWA fleet and as a thanks for my continued diligence and proffessionalism I was awarded with a base closure, a thousand mile relocation, repeated layoff and the final straw, negotiations in bad faith by the company while they recruited replacement (scabs) workers up to a year prior to the eminent strike. Fly em if you want but I value my well being enough not to fly. Good luck and God speed, you will need it.
September 16th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
It is very clear that your sentiment towards NWA is felt by those who are still working there.
Also, thanks for commenting and confirming my gut feeling that there had to be an actual fix to this problem other than putting paper towels in the vents.
The only time that I fly NWA is when my radio buying advertising agency (based in Minneapolis) books me to fly up there once a year. Otherwise, I prefer either American or Continental.
December 30th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I have been warned by a friend who is a pilot for NWA to NOT fly with them. He’s so worried about the safety of the planes that he has been desperately looking for a new job but in the meantime he has been taking out extra life insurance and documenting EVERY safety violation he sees and keeping copies of every safety report he files. It’s all in a big fat box that is going to the press in the event that a) he gets a new job, b) is fired or c) dies in a crash. DO NOT FLY NORTHWEST.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Smart move on the record keeping. Those planes scare me. They remind me of the old prop plane the team had to ride in the movie “Major League”.