northwest airlines or us air

[rainmaker]

Thanks for the info, Bill!

[jimc_usa]

Never flown USAir. First trip with Northwest was this past Jan for our cruise. I realize bad luck can happen with any airline, but we hit a streak of it. Flight delayed 1 1/2 hours due to de-icing...their one and only de-icing truck broke down so they had to wait until American was done with theirs to borrow a truck. Yeah. Got to Memphis late and missed our flight to Miami. Guess what? That was the only direct flight from Memphis to Miami that day...so they booked us on a flight to New Orleans with the last leg from New Orleans to Mia to be on American. But we had to wait at Memphis about 5 hours for this flight. When it got close to boarding time, they announced the PA system on the plane wasn't working and it would be at least an hour for them to get it fixed if they even could. REalizing that would make us miss our New Orleans flight to MIA we asked the gate attendant our options. He got a call and was talking the whole time and before we knew it he had printed us off tickets to St. Louis and said RUN. Great. We ran and barely made the flight to St. Louis. When we got to STL, bad news again. Airport had been closed for 2 hours due to snow. We had to wait an hour on the tarmac before we could even go up to the gate. When we got off the plane, we were already late for our flight to MIA...which they again gave us AA for the last leg since Northwest apparently didn't have anything. STL was a madhouse....wall to wall people. We RAN to the opposite end of the airport for our connecting flight (isn't it always that way?) and had to go through security again...but there was a line of about 100 people. WE knew if we had to wait through that line,we would miss the flight if we hadn't already. A nice security person directed us to another wing to check through security and go through back hallways where we needed to go. WE got on the plane just as it was boarding, thank god.

 

We arrived in MIA around 10pm when we were supposed to be there around noon. OUr luggage of course ended up in New Orleans. We had to file a claim for lost luggage...you have to do that with the airline who handled your last leg...which was American. We finally got to our hotel around 11:30 pm. We were at the Holiday Inn downtown. We had planned on spending the whole day at Bayside, but by the time we got there, everything but Hooters was closed. Best damn wings and corona I think I've ever had.

 

AA would have delivered our luggage to hotel the next day anytime b4 4pm, but we wanted to be on the ship early. So...since luggage was supposed to arrive around 8:30 am, we taxid back out to the airport...and whew, it came right out. Thank goodness we had our luggage.

 

I guess the good deal out of it was our travel insurance covered us on taxi fares, our meal at HOoters, and some other minimal overnight expenses. But it was the absolute worst flying experience i've ever had. AA really bailed us out...they de-iced our plane, they got us to MIA, and they got us our luggage...yet we had booked with Northwest. I will be real hesitant to book with Northwest again....not sure if my experience was a one time thing or what. But, you know what, we could have been out of our original airport on time if they'd had a working de-icing machine.

 

 

You cannot blame any airlines for weather.

 

My home base minneapolis has 8-10 de-icing trucks. I would rather wait 2 hours that take-off with wings full of ice.

In the winter time we ALWAYS fly in a day ahead of the cruise because we know you cannot trust the weather.