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Ronald J. Riley's NorthWorstAir Story
I had been considering creating a web site about NorthWorst Air for over a year. But I was simply too busy lobbying to defeat big businesses agenda for the patent system, namely so called patent reform. Near the end of last year I noticed many articles about how Mr. Vecci was being assigned to improve NWA's service.
So, in the middle of February I called Mr. Vecci. But instead of returning my call himself he had one of the low level peons who are paid to listen to customers call me back. After several weeks with no follow-up on Mr. Vecci's part I decided now was the time to launch this web site.
As a result of Mr. Vecci's failure to follow-up I now believe that the reports that he will improve service are just hype, damage control, and that NWA will quickly return to the ways which have earned them the NorthWorst name. After all, they have been known as NorthWorst for fifteen to twenty years.
I and many other people in a major corporation received such poor service from NWA around 1985 that management collectively decided to make NWA the carrier of last resort. This decision was made because we found, that on average our staff were losing four or five hours per trip due to canceled commuter flights and lost luggage.
I left that company in early 1990 to become an independent inventor. In late 1996, against my better judgment, I took my first NWA flight in near a decade. It went well, and I started using NWA again, mainly because Detroit Metro was in my cell phone's home area.
The next flight NWA damaged brand new hard shell luggage, two bags, by cutting deep gouges in the shells lengthwise. It took over six months to extract slightly less than $400 from NWA for the luggage. But when I reviewed the value of my and my assistance's time expended to get said compensation, we had really lost about $2000 on the deal.
The next trip, in early 1997, NWA canceled the last leg of my return flight from LA, CA. They substituted ground transportation for air, at the same price, returned us to Bishop Airport in Flint Michigan near five hours late, and lost my luggage. When I finally received the luggage it was damaged, but based on past experience I knew it was a waste of time to make a claim.
Because of these problems, and the fact that I had received more complaints about NWA from Professional Inventors Alliance members than any other airline, I decided to boycott NWA once again. So, on 2-27-98 I took the unprecedented action of sending a memo to PIA members to avoid NWA if at all possible.
But I had enough frequent flier miles for a trip where I was taking my daughter to Washington National to attend the MIT-Lemelson Awards in April 1998, so I purchased a ticket for myself from NWA. It was the last time, just to wipe out the frequent flier miles. Big mistake. Northwest broke the active matrix screen on my $4000 notebook computer, and they have been stonewalling me for since April 1998, denying liability.
Associated Aviation Underwriters Response
Globe Aviation Services Corporation Response
The security staff refused to document the incident. And they and NWA staff are experts at passing the buck. Even worse is the fact that a significant percentage of NWA staff are obnoxious and rude. Rude staff backed up by condescending and rude management.
And then there is the matter of a gate agent whom NWA management claims is one of their award winning representatives. After I had waited my turn in line at about 10 PM this award winning NWA representative proceeded to service three customers who came to the station after I had arrived. When the NWA representative finally addressed me I demanded to know why he had waited on us out of order.
This award winning representative proceeded to belligerently inform me that if I did not calm down that he did not have to wait on me - that I could come back in the morning.
At that point I demanded his name and his supervisor's name. He refused to give me his name.
I responded to this by making a big scene, yelling my demand for his name. He finally told me that both his and his supervisor's name were Chris, but refused to give me either last name.
I contacted the manager of the Bishop airport NWA facility, sending them a letter detailing the incident. After numerous follow-up calls he told me he had forwarded my claim to management.
Since May of 1998 NWA has claimed they are not responsible for the loss.
When I pressed him about Chris's behavior he told me that Chris was an award winner and that Chris's version of the events did not square with mine. He claimed that Chris's version was corroborated by others, but was very vague and evasive. I was eventually able to confirm that the man who started the new line, who Chris waited on out of order, was the person supposedly backing Chris version of the story.
Now my question is there some relationship between these two? Maybe this person was waited on out of order because he was a friend? Or maybe he was a NWA employee or a vendor who had inside pull? It is clear that once Chris realized that I was going to make a big stink about his actions that he, and his coworkers, started to do their best to cover their disreputable backsides.
But regardless, even if NWA could explain away that incident, they would still have many thousands of other indiscretions to account for.
Unfortunately for NWA, I have credibility which makes it very difficult for them to sell these types of claims, and even more important I have access to many other people of stature who also have been victimized by an organization which has zero credibility, NWA.
 Northwest
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Ronald
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