This is what happen to me. i reserved a ticket,
and got a price quote I thought was reasonable from the sales agent, but when I decided to hang up the agent, persuaded me by telling me that I might not get the price again, but I could
reserve the ticket with my credit card for 24 hours, without the ticket being charged to
my account, but if I did not call after 24 hours, my ticket will be charged. The next day, I
found another ticket through my agent for a cheaper price, about 250 less than what I
was going to pay NW, so I decided to buy that one. I later called NW to cancel the ticket,
but to my surprise, I was told by the agent that my credit card had been charged, and
the ticket had been sent to me, and in order for me to get my money back, I had to
bring the ticket to a NW counter and my local airport. I was furious, my comments
where “is it a normal practice for NW to take money out to customers account whenever
they reserve a ticket before the 24 hour deadline?” the agent on the phone would not
answer my question, and instead she read some regulation off her monitor and referred
me to a customer experience number. To cut the long story shot, I had never experience
listening and being transferred to so many computerized message, given me the option
to press (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) to be transferred to another computerized message. I went
through this process for about 3days before I finally got someone by pressing different
numbers randomly until I got to speak to a human being. I explained my situation to her,
with the treat I was going to sue the company before she was able to expedite my
situation to another person who then faxed me a lost ticket form (which I never had) in
order for the money to be put back on my credit card. Still i don’t have my money. When I asked her if this was
standard practice, her statement to me was that some agent might do this in order to get
sale credit, which makes their live comfortable but mine miserable for few days. These
are some of the UN spoken insider rule that go on in the organization. i am never flying the airline again, and i am going public with this information.

Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR Part 121 if you want some light reading) set forth particular guidelines on how long a pilot or flight attendant can fly during a given day and how long the rest period has to be before going on duty again. Additionally, most airlines are also governed by a pilot/flight attendant contract, which future delineates the duty on/duty off rules.

As Wayne alluded to, the Work Crew Limitation may have been caused by someone calling in sick, but it also may have been caused by a whole host of other factors. These are things like weather delays, mechanical delays, change of aircraft type, medical expiration, etc… Whatever the cause, it probably happened earlier in the day. NWA’s Crew Scheduling and Operations Control Center were probably working to correct it, but without success. Thus, one or more of the crewmembers probably ran out of duty time… but that’s just my speculation.

The entire airline industry is leaning towards using technology to reduce their costs. That’s why you see ticketing kiosks popping up all over the place; the fewer employees it takes to process a ticket the more money the airline saves. Of course, more and more of the flying public WANT to use these technologies, since it puts more control in their hands versus someone like a travel agent.

The thing that no one ever realizes is that more than 50% of an airline’s fixed costs are pilot’s salaries. That doesn’t leave very many other ways to cut costs… pilots are pretty important to an airline.

Anyway, this is much more interesting to discuss in person.

Sorry about the problems. I hope the rest of your Holiday’s go much better.

LWR

I have been reading through your “rants”, and quite enjoy them, so I thought I would add my own little comment on this one.

I do not work in the Airline industry, but I do work closely with them, and there are some human reasons for what has happened. Basically, it all goes back to September 11th. When the Twin Towers were hit, and all flights were banned in the U.S., the airlines were hit bad financially. Many here in Europe went bankrupt. The few that did survive relied heavily on borrowing, as well as reducing their services. This meant: reduced amount of flights, especially on non- or limited-revenues flights, and reductions in personell (as well as an adaption of J.I.T. to their personell approach). In other words, they stayed alive by reducing themselves to a minimal amount of employees.

This was problem 1. Problem 2, which also encouraged minimal staff was the increase in no-frills airlines, which had cheaper fares, but didn’t offer the extras. Many of the larger airlines can’t compete price-wise, without upsetting their other customers who want the frills. So, further cuts were made in staff by most airlines in 2002-2003.

Why did they cancel the flight? Probably one or two people called in sick, had personal emergencies (death in family, etc.), or they simply No-Showed. Whatever it was W.C.L. is shorthand for someone isn’t at work today. Could they have known this in advance? Not really. But… could they have planned for it? Yes, but that means hiring additional staff, which wrecks their ability to pay back that nasty debt they racked up in 2001, not to mention their ability to please their shareholders by finally turning in the black.

It is easy to hate a company that doesn’t provide, especially at a time when we really needed their service. But a company can make mistakes just like you or I. If they have done this to you a few times, then I would agree with you: “Never fly Northwest Airlines.” But if it is a once-off, I say give them another chance.

Our current financial climate (both world-wide and in the U.S.) is shaky. If we start boycotting companies based on single mistakes, we are going to cost people their jobs, not to mention the increase in monopolies (after all, if Northwest lose customers and goes broke, a new company won’t get their business, it will be taken by one of the current airlines), which means less control by the consumer.

If you are really upset with their service, write to them, and tell them why you are upset, what you expect, and any compensation you feel entitled to. If they do not provide you with an adequate response, then you can boycott them. IN fact, I would go a bit further, and let others know of how uncooperative they were, even going to the papers. But, until you have tried to find a solution with them, and until they have failed you, perhaps the time for personal protests is not yet at hand. If you upset me, I would go to you directly, rather than everyone else first. If it continued or you were uncooperative, then I would perhaps involve a third party. After all “reprove betimes with sharpness” is how we should treat our fellow man, so why not our fellow business (which is nothing more than a group of men)?

I better stress something here: I don’t work for Northwest, or any other airline. I just feel that given the state of the current economic climate, we need to understand where such problems are coming from, and deal with them directly. If we don’t the company won’t change, they will continue to make the same mistake, and people will lose jobs. But, by trying to help a company positively rectify their errors, we can help them and conversely help ourselves.

Cheers,

Wayne