I'm a little late on this one, but as I get the opportunity to bitch about Northworst Airlines, it's not like I'm going to pass this one up. The proposed merger between Northworst and Delta has been put on the back burner.
A new era of belt-tightening is beginning for Northwest Airlines, as its executives respond to abnormally high fuel costs and craft a future that in the short run isn't predicated on a merger.The company's planned combination with Delta Air Lines was envisioned as a way to create a global airline that would be a long-term survivor in an intensely competitive industry. Their networks are compatible, with Northwest dominant in Asia and Delta strong in Europe.
But now that merger looks to be on indefinite hold, and with it the vision of building a larger company that could grow its way to greater profits while also being better insulated against cyclical downturns.
Now some analysts are forecasting that most major U.S. airlines will lose money this year, and additional cost savings are tougher to find because a number of carriers -- including Northwest and Delta -- already have restructured themselves in bankruptcy.
{...}An evolving part of that strategy is how to deal with much higher fuel prices than management anticipated.
Northwest revealed last week that its fuel bill could reach $5.2 billion this year if oil averages $104 a barrel. That's $800 million more than the carrier projected for 2008, or more than half of the $1.4 billion in annual labor savings that Northwest achieved from its workers during bankruptcy.{...}
Riddle me this, Joker: one of the reasons NWA went into bankruptcy a few years back (besides the fact that the fat cats at the top would get paid more if they reorganized under Chapter 11 before new bankruptcy laws were enacted) was because of "astronomical fuel prices" that they hadn't anticipated. Now, a few years later, they're still whining about how quickly fuel prices have gone up and how they haven't worked this into their business plan? How the eff is that possible, when anyone who fills up their car on a regular basis knew that the price of oil wasn't likely to go down anytime soon? Eh? How is it possible that the MBAs at Northworst thought that prices would go down and calculated their projections accordingly?
I've gone on at length in the past about how shitty it is to be stuck in a Northworst dominated hub. Everyone I know who lives elsewhere refuses to believe that the situation could be as crappy as it is. They have received good deals and good service from Northworst. I regularly get emails from my brother in Austin, who would really like me to visit, claiming that it's only a hundred and some dollars to fly from Austin to MSP, so why don't I buy the freakin' ticket already? Of course, I have to regularly disabuse him, because NWA wants twice as much from me to fly from MSP to Austin.
Northworst has a lock on MSP International Airport. They control over seventy-five percent of the gates. The population of the Twin Cities is close to three million people and we don't have a low cost airline available to us. Neither Southwest nor Jet Blue operate here. Why? Because Northworst won't let them in. They threaten and cajole the Metropolitan Airport Commission with the loss of their business, and because they've set themselves up in the dominant position, and MAC is worried that they could find themselves with a huge but empty airport, they cave every time. Never mind the fact that, in the early nineties, Northworst borrowed somewhere around $125 million from the state to stay out of bankruptcy, never paid the money back, let alone the interest on the loan, and then had the debt forgiven when they did declare bankruptcy. Never mind the fact that Northworst, an airline that didn't have one of its flights forcibly hijacked and crashed on 9/11, had its lobbyists up on Capitol Hill on 9/12, begging for federal assistance to keep running before the fires at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center had stopped burning.
Then there's the fact that they treat their customers like shit. They just don't give a rat's ass about the people who actually fund their billion dollar largesse. You pay through the nose for a ticket because you don't have any other option, (for instance, we have a family reunion coming up in August, and I checked the prices the other day, just to see where they're at. Currently, they want $506 per person to fly from MSP to Austin in early August. You're generally supposed to get some discount for purchasing early, but not now. They're going to get you coming and going. Get bent.) You show up at the airport to check-in for your flight, and, if you got stuck in traffic and are running late, be prepared to be yelled at about your tardiness by the ticket agent, with dire threats of your bag not making onto the plane hurled at you for good measure. If you're lucky, you walk away from the counter without paying anything extra. But, if you haven't packed carefully enough, or tried to fit all of the belongings of many people into one bag, you're screwed. They weigh every piece of checked luggage to make certain it doesn't weigh over fifty pounds and if it does, in the name of funding their worker's compensation plan (or so they say), they charge you $25 on the spot. You get through the hassle that is security, then you go and get a bottle of water for your flight, so you don't get dehydrated. Because the airport is paying off a load of debt Northworst forced them to take on to upgrade the airport (otherwise, of course, they would have taken their business elsewhere), you wind up paying $3 for the bottle of water, the costs of debt servicing having been passed on to the retailers through astronomical rents, who, ultimately, pass them onto you, the paying customer. Then, after you're treated to the hassle of getting to your gate, and after you've been treated indifferently by the rude gate agents, who always have something better to do than the job they're paid for, you get on your plane, where you're crammed into a seat that would only fit a toddler comfortably. If you want to sit in the bulkhead, or the emergency exit rows, you have to pay extra for the privilege of opening the emergency exit doors in exchange for a little more legroom. Once you're settled in your extra small seat, and are crammed in like sardines in a tin can, you are, predictably, told by the pilot, that you're going to be late taking off. To make up for the late take-off, the pilots jam up into the stratosphere as fast as they can, causing your ears to pop, for babies to wail, and for allergy and cold sufferers to moan in pain. The speedy rise in altitude is, of course, accompanied by a rapid descent, which causes even more pain and wailing. When you actually land, you have to suffer through an interminable taxi to the gate, the indignities of unloading, only to have to wait a half hour or longer to get your luggage, which, undoubtedly, will have been shaken and jostled by baggage agents who could not care less if you actually like your possessions and would prefer for them to remain in one piece. Never mind that your bottle of shampoo has exploded in mid-flight because of the massive shifts in altitude and all of your belongings are now covered in soapy goo.
But I've neglected to mention the wonderful customer service that the flight attendants offer. They no longer help people stow their carry-ons, but rather bitch and moan when there isn't enough room for all of them, and then get on the loudspeaker to berate people, and inform them that the plane isn't taking off until they, the passengers, get things sorted out amongst themselves and someone checks their bag. When they come around with the beverage cart, they sniff if someone requests something that would require them to do some work, like mixing a Virgin Mary. Then, if you're the husband, and are sitting on the aisle, prepare to have a flight attendant dump milk down your $800 black cashmere sport coat. They do, somehow, manage to apologize in this circumstance, but only because it's going to come back and bite them on the ass if they don't. They'll offer up some club soda and where to send the drycleaning bill, but if the jacket comes back from the cleaners with the milk stain intact, don't bother trying to get compensated for the loss of the jacket, because not only will they want a copy of the original receipt, which was lost to the sands of time, they want to know how much the jacket is worth now, forcing you to sort out the depreciation on a cashmere sport coat that's going to cost just as much to replace as when you originally purchased it. Because that's all they're going to pay for if you manage to get them everything they want in the first place, which happens to be an inordinately large amount of paper. They actively look for ways to get out of their obligations. But I digress. Then, after you manage to get your one obligatory beverage out of these people, if you want something to eat, because, perhaps, if you're me, you have to take medication that requires it to be taken with food, you'll have to pay extra for a teeny can of Pringles. Then, when they're done with serving, the flight attendants roam the cabin, collecting trash as quickly as they can so they can get back to their jump seats, where they'll bitch, loudly, about how onerous their jobs are, and how people can be such a pain in the ass, within earshot of said people.
And all this is if your flight goes off as planned. God help you if there are weather or mechanical related delays.
This is what passes for customer service on Northworst. I'm not alone in this opinion, either. While I'm sure there are nice people that work very hard for this airline to make their customers happy, and they will howl with outrage at this rejoinder, all I can say to them is that your compadres are ruining it for you. Again, I'm not alone in my complaints. Everyone I know here in the Cities has at least one Northworst horror story in their repertoire, and everyone they know has a similar tale of woe. We talk about it at dinner parties: it's a favored topic of conversation. When that many people have had a poor experience with a company, something's wrong. Unfortunately, Northworst does nothing to fix these problems. They file for bankruptcy, in part, to pay their employees less, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to realize that the customers are going to suffer as a result. Furthermore, Twin Cities residents are supposed to consider ourselves privileged that Northworst has headquartered itself here, and that MSP International Airport is a hub. We're supposed to consider ourselves lucky that we have an international airline at our disposal. Well, pardon the language, but fuck that. We're expected to take it from all angles: as taxpayers we have to bail this stupid company out, and fund their largesse through tax breaks and airport expansions they declare they need to stay competitive, and then we're stuck using them because they have a lock on the market. We're held hostage by this freakin' company. I, for one, would have been extremely happy if they'd merged with Delta, because perhaps we would have started to receive some decent customer service. Perhaps they could have found some cost savings and stopped nickel and diming us at every turn. Perhaps we would have received some decent, fair pricing. But that's not going to happen.
I don't think I'm alone in saying that I hope Northworst does go out of business. It would be better for the people who are forced to fly this garbage airline because we have very few other alternatives, but it would be better for the Twin Cities economy as a whole, because, perhaps, the freebies we hand out to Northworst on a regular basis would finally come to an end. The free market would find a solution to the problem of all those empty gates at MSP, and we would finally get some competition in this market.
UPDATE: Oooh, how convenient! Proof of more nickel and diming to make my point!
If you want to check a second bag on your next trip on Northwest Airlines, you'll be paying an extra $25 starting May 5.The fee applies each way on flights for passengers in coach class.
The move, announced this afternoon, follows an industry-wide trend started by United Airlines in early February.
If you travel extra heavy, you'll have heavier costs. The Northwest changes also include an increase from $80 to $100 for three or more checked bags, and an increase from $25 to $50 if a bag weighs more than 50 pounds.{...}
I can't check two suitcases without paying extra? Bite me. The sooner this airline dies a horrendous and painful death, the better.
Posted by Kathy at March 28, 2008 09:43 AM | TrackBack