Northwest Debacle

Labor Day

A wonderful vacation to Alaska ended poorly when our Northwest flight from Vancouver to Albany, via Detroit, was cancelled due to a failed navigational system. The cancelled flight was inconvenient, but one of those things that you just chalk up to bad luck when you’re traveling, much like inclement weather. However, dealing with the incompetencies of Northwest has made the last 24 hours a nightmare. The ordeal isn’t over yet as I’m writing this from the Detroit Metro terminal, although I won’t post it until I get home because I refuse to pay for internet access at the airport.

Our Northwest itinerary for the last 24 hours:

Sunday – Vancouver

11:50 a.m. PDT Dispose of all beverages and board flight.

12:20 p.m. Flight is supposed to take off.

12:30 p.m. Slight mechanical problem. Just sit tight.

12:45 p.m. Waiting for a mechanic. It’ll be about an hour. You can get off the plane, but you don’t have to take your carry-on bags. (Yes, some people actually left their bags on the plane unattended. Who are these people?)

1:00 p.m. Please reboard the plane to claim your carry-on bags. Oh, and if you’ve lost your little boarding pass stub, wait in line for another one before reboarding the plane to get your bags and get off again.

1-5:00 p.m. Northwest couldn’t decide if they would fix the plane, reschedule our flight, or rebook us on another flight, so for the next four hours we walked around the Vancouver airport in the following loop, prodded along by poorly informed Northwest employees. (Note that Vancouver is a fairly large international airport.)

• leave gate
  
• pickup baggage (the first two times the bags didn’t show up and Northwest said they’d get them for us – ha!)
  
• exit through Canadian immigration
  
• go to ticket counter and be instructed to return to gate
  
• reenter U.S. customs
  
• reenter airport security
  
• walk to gate again

We did this loop three times non-stop with vague instructions from Northwest personnel along the way. You know there’s a problem when the customs and security agents stop you and ask why you keep coming around.

5:00 p.m. Northwest officially cancels our flight and reschedules us for 7:00 a.m. on Monday. They provide us with meal coupons and a hotel voucher and instruct us to take the free shuttle to the hotel.

5:00-6:30 p.m. 150 people wait in line for 2 hotel shuttles that can only hold 12-people each. Oh, wait, with all of the luggage that we have they can only hold about 8 people each. You do the math.

7:00 p.m. Wait with 150 people to check into the same hotel.

7:30 p.m. Finally get to eat mediocre free meal. It’s been 12 hours since our last meal and 7 hours since our last drink of any kind.

8:00 p.m. Settle into our room and take stock of the day. My still unhealed ankle is the size of a grapefruit and Eddie’s left hand has swollen to twice its normal size from carrying bags all day. In addition to our 6 bags, we occasionally helped some of the elderly passengers who couldn’t manage on their own. Luggage carts and wheelchair assistance were in short supply.

Monday
4:15 a.m. Northwest is supposed to send two large buses at 4:45 to pick up 150 people from the hotel and return us to the airport. We tried to avoid the hassle and reserved a taxi van to haul us and all of our bags to the airport. We figured it was worth $20 but another couple from our flight stole our cab and refused to give it up even when Eddie confronted them. (As luck would have it they ended up sitting in the row in front of us on the plane, looking slightly embarrassed when they sat down.)

5:00 a.m. The big buses never show up (surprise!) so we wait for the two 12-person shuttle buses to make their rounds.

7:00 a.m. Finally make it on board our flight. Supposed to take off but some passengers haven’t made it yet. They were probably still waiting for the hotel shuttles.

8:15 a.m. Take-off!

3:00 p.m. EDT Arrive in Detroit. Wait in terminal for 6 hours for connecting flight to Albany.

Blogging is definitely cathartic. I feel better already. Only 4 more hours to wait!