Comments on: Trip Report: Good Times on Northwest’s Aging Aircraft

By: David

David — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:42:21 +0000

Many folks rag on NW, but for every horror story that I’ve heard about NW, I hear just as many about any other airline. Long story short, there are good staff members and bad staff members that work for every airline. As a NW elite, I admit that it’s not the ritziest airline out there, but it’s always gotten me where I needed to go.

By: Dan Webb

Dan Webb — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:45:29 +0000

I flew in a 319 in the old colors last year. I’ve seen some photos of the OC on jetphotos.net recently but I’m not sure how many are left. I’m going to guess at this point it’s not a high priority for NW as everything will get the DL colors anyway.

By: David SF east bay

David SF east bay — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:58:08 +0000

My very first airplane trip was on Northwest back in the summer of 1977, San Francisco to Honolulu roundtrip on 747′s. The flight going hardly had anyone one it and the flight attendants in last coach section pretty much ignored the passengers and say in passenger seats chatting with each other. They were not very nice when they did have passenger contact. Was that a sign of things to come? The return flight was full and I mean full. After HNL the flight goes on to Tokyo and from Tokyo on the return so there was mostly tourist from Japan on the flight.

Since then I’ve never had the need or urge to fly on NW.

By: CF

CF — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:56:18 +0000

Chris – Yeah, that’s not very clear, huh? That was my description of the livery. It’s the current silvery one with the big compass logo on the tail. Actually, do they even have any in the old bowling shoe colors? I saw a few airlink planes in the old livery but not any mainline ones.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:50:19 +0000

Wondering what “Silver Compass” means in respect to the NW flights.

By: Brian Lusk

Brian Lusk — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:51:33 +0000

Way back when the ice age was receeding and I began to work at Delta, we used to have to clean overnight DC-9s. I always thought that the cockpit looked like you would expect a DC-3 or Convair 440 cockpit to look like. I always liked the DC-9 as a passenger, and flew on examples belonging to Air Canada, Continental, Delta, Hughes AirWest, and Ozark. It was the easiest airplane I ever worked on the ramp. Half the time, you didn’t even need to get inside the bin. The most difficult ramp task was unloading a human remains from the DC-9.

When I left Delta in 1994, we still had FAs identifying themselves as ex-Northeast. (I think we even had a few ex Chicago and Southern Employees.) So, with the latest merger, we will have ex NW, ex-SO, ex-RC, ex-AirWest, ex-PA, ex-WA, ex-NE, all blending with DL folks.

By: Dave Hodgkinson

Dave Hodgkinson — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:10:39 +0000

Another data point: NWA coach was better than fine from LGW to their hub (Minininiappolis?). From there to LAX was horrid but they were clearing a backlog from canellations due to bad weather.

By: eponymous coward

eponymous coward — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:50:59 +0000

Yeah, Alaska’s just retired their MD-83s that are maybe half the age of those DC-9s. While I understand why (fuel, fuel and fuel), I always liked the fact that F and the front of the plane on any of the Mad Dogs is whisper-quiet (of course, there’s also the seats in the back that are so loud you need ear plugs).

By: Scott Wintner

Scott Wintner — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:50:19 +0000

Glad you enjoyed your early morning visit to DTW. Let us know next time you come through… if it’s not at some insane hour, we’d love to give you the grand tour!

Scott @ DTW

By: Skinny

Skinny — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:34:41 +0000

I flew NW last October IND-DTW-ALB, DC-9s all the way. None of my flights were even half full, it was great. I was able to sprawl out on the seats and relax (even though neither of the flights were exactly long). However, and I rarely say this, my experience on US (ALB-PHL-IND) may have been better on the way out. I don’t know why but it was my first experience on the E-175 (the PHL-IND portion, ALB-PHL was an A319) and I was pretty amused with the new plane smell that the Republic jet had.

I do believe when I was in IND we boarded by seat groups, but at DTW boarded all together (there was seriously only 15 or 20 people on the plane).