Northwest Airlines Review

Overall 2.80 of 5 view all 55 reviews

mrkstvns
Austin, TX

Northwest DESERVES to Go Bankrupt!

tired of airport hassles, love to travel, a frequent flyer, up, up and AWAY!, expecting good, fair service

Cons

nickel-and-dime surcharges, charges for aisle seat, deceptive prices, poor customer service, unfair labor practices, poor service while boarding, frequent delayed flights, can be expensive

FEB

2008

Northwest Airlines —

There is one U.S. airline that I view as, by far, the worst of the bunch: Northwest. It seems to me like every time any passenger-hostile business practice gets introduced into the travel market, it's Northwest that's behind it. They don't care about their passengers, they treat their employees like dirt, and they have some of the worst performance results in the U.S. skies.

Customer Hostility...
Northwest makes a business practice out of deceptive pricing and false advertising. A few examples:

What airline was it that first introduced hidden $10 "booking fees" on their tickets? Northwest! They did it so they could lie to customers about their fares, putting deceptively low fares on the web that were, in reality, HIGHER than their competitors. Sleazeballs!!
What airline was it that first introduced the "fuel surcharge"? Northwest!! Sleazeballs again...advertising "bait and switch" prices.
What airline was it that so aggressively cut in-flight meals and drinks? Northwest!! (They pocket the savings, YOU get a better flight deal by NOT flying Northwest, and instead, taking Continental).
What airline was it that slapped customers with a $15 surcharge for aisle seats? Northwest!!

Hard to believe *ANYBODY* has an ounce of respect for these flying snakes in the grass.

Employee Hostility...
The only people Northwest treats worse than their passengers are their employees. They renege on contracts, they hire scabs, and they somehow manage to find money to hire armies of lawyers to fight their employees instead of simply treating them with honesty. A few examples:

When mechanics walked off the job because Northwest reneged on their labor contract, Northwest hired scabs. They got away with it by weilding the power of bankruptcy courts. Now I don't know about you, but I have *SERIOUS* qualms about flying an airline with justifiably p*ssed off mechanics.
Northwest also shoved a 25% pay cut down the throats of their flight attendants. Now I don't know about you, but I have *SERIOUS* doubts about my chances of getting good, friendly service from justifiably p*ssed off flight attendants.
While fat cat executives enjoyed their fat paychecks and continued to let their lawyers feed at the trough, Northwest rubbed salt in the wounds of their abused workforce by issuing some "helpful advice" on how to cope with their newly cut salaries and benefits. Among their "tips" to employees were: - shop at thrift stores for clothing, - dig through trash cans to find uneaten scraps of food, - walk to work. Insensitive? You bet!! But truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction, and just to let you know that I'm not making this stuff up, here's a link where you can read about it for yourself. (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14410893/)

Poor Performance....
As if deceptive pricing, nickel and diming, and abusing their employees aren't reason enough to avoid Northwest, you can also avoid them because they won't get you where you're going when you want to be there.

Most U.S. airlines have been having trouble keeping their schedules on-time lately, and flight delays have been getting worse as the U.S. government continues its irresponsible underregulation of the industry. Evenso, Northwest is significantly worse than average.

If you visit the U.S. Department of Transportation web site and look for their monthly Air Travel Consumer Reports, you'll see that I'm not pulling the wool over your eyes at all: Northwest truly stinks!

For the month of December 2007, Northwest can barely deliver half its passengers to their destination on time! (57.8% on-time arrival rate). Now of course you can say "That's just one month", but the beauty of the December report is that it contains composite stats for the whole year. Look at those and you see that, out of 20 airlines, Northwest was number 17 in Q1, 14 in Q2, 13 in Q3, and 15 in Q4. In NO QUARTER did they manage to rise into the top half of the industry. Northwest is uncomfortably comfortable having their flights arrive late about twice as often as their better-managed competitors.

Bottom Line...
You can fly Northwest if you like, but you're fooling yourself if you think they're good. Their "great prices" are often a shell game that actually ends up costing you MORE than if you'd just booked your flight with a competitor. I'm unhappy with their business practices that make deception and unfair treatment of employees into "everday occurrences". I don't respect them at all because they're always trying to find new ways to cheat their passengers, cheat their employees, or cheat their shareholders. They're a sleazy company that can't even get their planes to arrive on time.

In my opinion, the best way to improve the performance and quality of the U.S. airline industry is to begin by letting Northwest die a painful death. They are the real bottom feeders of the American skies.