Back from Las Vegas; No More Northwest Flights for Me
As the airlines cut and cut-- travel becomes more of an adventure. Today, I cross my arms, pout, and proudly declare that I will never, ever fly Northwest Airlines again.
In February, my wife and I got "bumped" off of a Northwest flight. As compensation, we were given paper TCV Exchange Coupons. The gate agent assured us that this green and white paper voucher (printed on ticket stock) could be traded in for a round trip ticket anywhere in the US, Alaska or Canada.
With some difficulty, including a trip to the airport to physically hand the voucher to a ticket agent, I was able to trade the vouchers for tickets to Las Vegas for my upcoming wedding anniversary.
When the big day arrived, my wife and I sauntered up the counter to victoriously claim our free trip to Vegas. The agent took our boarding passes and cast a sympathetic look at our bag. The bag, which was one pound overweight, would be $50. I shrugged and handed her my credit card.
She sighed and looked at me with even more sympathy. "You won't be able to make it."
I checked my watch (which synchronizes nightly with the atomic clock in Boulder Colorado). It was 6:28 am, and I still hadn't had a cup of coffee yet. My caffeine-deprived mind couldn't understand what the woman was saying. Sensing my confusion, she added, "You need check in at least 30 minutes before the flight. We recommend at least one hour and seventeen minutes." I checked in online the previous night and the flight boarded at 7:00am. I looked around at the cavernous and empty terminal. I was dumbstruck.
She pressed on and delivered the bad news -- the flight was overbooked, as were all of the flights for the rest of the day. For $25 each, we could fly standby but it looked like we weren't going to get to Las Vegas for our wedding anniversary. She took our bags, charged my card, and gave us some standby tickets. Our bags made it to Las Vegas on time, but we didn't.
The 9:30am flight was overbooked. We were #2 and #3 on the standby list (out of 22). The flight left without us. The 11:30 am flight left without us also. The gate agent told us all the flights were entirely full; we weren't getting to Las Vegas unless we drove.
As I looked at my wife and saw that her eyes were welling up with tears, I started thinking of alternatives. If I did nothing, we were going to get charged for a hotel room we wouldn't sleep in; our tickets to KÀ would be worthless, and our anniversary would be spent pleading with northwest agents. After discussing the situation with the gate agent (who surprisingly suggested flying Southwest [good advice, I will in the future] ), I opted for a confirmed seat to Orange County, California. My plan was simple: get as close as I could and drive the rest.
Luckily, I had packed my Garmin 495, with the automotive power connector and bean bag. I rationalized that we were going to rent a car to drive out to Hoover Dam anyway...
We finally arrived (by car) at McCarran International Airport more than sixteen (16) hours after our bags did. Not including food and gas, we were out $289 for the over weight bag fee, standby fees, and car rental. Tired and road weary, we found our bag behind a locked glass door. The note on the door said that if the baggage office was closed, go to the ticket counter. So we did. We walked the length of the concourse, up and down the escalators to find the ticket counter... which was closed.
On the way to the MGM Grand, I guesstimated how long it would have taken in a Cessna 172 single engine plane to get there, including fuel stops. Had I had a complex endorsement, I could have rented a Piper Arrow that would have done it easily in 9-12 hours, including fuel stops.
The rest of our trip was relatively enjoyable and uneventful, but I'm still silently fuming at how consistently bad my experiences with Northwest were.
On the hundreds of flights I have taken on the other airlines (American, Cathay Pacific, JAL, Continental, Jet Blue, and Southwest)-- not once did I get bumped or denied. Not once did my baggage get lost. However, on Northwest, 100% of the trips I have taken I ended up with my baggage being sent somewhere else, and/or I was denied.
Granted, this is a small sample size, but I now view Northwest as the armpit of the airline industry. When it came time to book my business travel to Asia, there was no way I was going to use Northwest. I booked my business class tickets on American/JAL.
Labels: business travel
There is a rule called 240 that you could have used which means that have to put you on the next outgoing flight with any airline to your destionation. If you want to syndicate your article more and yell at northwest flights alot I would suggest that you send this to the consumerist because people love stories like this and they'll eat it right up. Northwest might give you a full refund if you complain enough on line.
Posted by
Shortshire |
August 1, 2008 4:58 PM