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What NWA Customers Have to Say
Posted by V. V. Williams on March 11, 1999 at 3:59 PM:
Since my wife and I come from Minnesota and South Dakota respectively, we are, willy-nilly, virtually hostage to Northwes when we're in the US. Of the 40,000+ miles we log a year, fully a third of it is usually on Northwest -- the rest being on KLM, Gulf Air, and Emirates (Emirates being amongst the world's absolute best, I might add.). Although we've been luckier than most with respect to lost/damaged luggage and consistently late flights, we have virtually never had a flight on NW that didn't leave -- at the very least -- a very sour taste in our mouths.
We'd like to know where they get their personnel. It used to be, people made jokes about airline employees' having been put through Smile School. With NW, it's more like post-graduate courses in Frown School. It is incredible how insufferably rude, unhelpful, and high-handed NW's cabin staff is. On one recent flight, a stewardess spilled a full glass of Coke over me because she had tried to hand it to me instead of serving it on a little tray. When I pointed that out, she snarled, "Maybe so." and flounced off down the aisle. She then studiously ignored both my wife and me for the rest of the flight, and didn't even have the good manners to bring a damp cloth for me to use to wipe myself up.
Or how about the food? Even on international flights where they HAVE to serve something because of the competition, it's pretty awful -- what little there is of it. Not long ago we were on a flight from Osaka to Honolulu. There was so little served that we found ourselves hungry when we arrived. That said, transpacific flights do seem to be a lot better than transatlantic ones simply because the staff is mostly Asian, which means they bring with them their sense of good manners and grace and believe in treating passengers as honored guests rather than as cattle, which is their American counterparts' approach.
As for domestic food, when you get it, it's appalling. On a flight from Newark to Seattle via Memphis, we were "treated" to a choice between a patty melt and a bagel dog. We both detest bagels, so patty melts were our choice. When we got them, they were barely warm, the bread was the consistency of wet cardboard, the cheese more closely resembled some kind of tile adhesive than dairy product, and the meat was almost certainly more than 50% soy -- and these were served from a plastic garbage bag that the crew schlepped down the aisle!! Adding insult to injury, we were offered that same disgusting choice on *both* legs of the flight!
Then you compare this to the service we're used to here in the Gulf. On a 30 minute flight between Muscat (Oman) and Dubai (UAE) on Gulf Air, we get a hot light snack, something like a meat or vegetable filled pastry (samosa) plus a small salad and drinks. And this is in economy.
 Northwest Made |
Ronald
J. Riley
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 Wasted Time & Money |