Northwest
 

I don't know what Northwest's reputation is, but every leg of our flight was late. They lost my friend's luggage twice and mine once. It actually wasn't lost, it just didn't make the last flight because everything was running so late. We arrived home at 9:30 p.m. and then had to wait until 11 p.m. for our luggage to arrive. On our way to Europe, our flight out of our home airport was delayed to the point that we missed our connection and we lost our first day in Prague. Northwest gave us each a $200 voucher, but I don't know that I want to fly with them again to use the voucher.

Delays, misconnection and late bags happen on all airlines. What were the reasons for the delays? Any reason you feel like it's a systemic NW problem and not just bad luck?

I've had a lot of bad luck with Northwest and they are well down on the list of airlines I consider.

On the other hand, if you don't want to use the voucher...

Keith

The reason I thought it was Northwest and not just bad luck is that I haven't had any problems with the couple of other flights that I have taken. It wasn't just one flight that was late, it was each and every leg of the trip that was late for various reasons. I didn't realize all airlines make you miss your connection like we did. That seems odd to me that missed connections should be a normal expectation. Late flights, yes, but missed connections, no. I'm sure they happen, but it shouldn't be the normal.

<i> Late flights, yes, but missed connections, no. I'm sure they happen, but it shouldn't be the normal.</i>

Again, it depends upon the route and the time of year. If you fly AA through ORD during the winter, then missed connections can happen all the time. Ditto for Delta through Atlanta when the summer storms blow through.

At the end of the day, you were unlucky. NW's on-time ratings are decidedly average. Not great, but not horrible either. The likelihood that you will consistently get better on-time performance from any of the other major airlines is not very high. You note that you don't fly much, so you might fly a carrier a few times and think it is good or bad, but your sample size is so small that luck is much more important to your experience than any of the airline's problems.

FWIW, I fly NW a fair amount, with maybe 15 to 20 legs in the past 12 months, and I have not had any significant problems. Then again, I have also flown several other carriers during that time, without a major incident (a lost bag or two, though), so perhaps I am just lucky.

Thanks travelgourmet for explaining what I'm trying to imply. There's not enough data point to suggest it's a systematic NW problem.

Missed connections do happen all the time on all airlines, if you're are careless (or just don't care) about time for connection.

And for the record, NW is definitely not my favorite carrier; but during my recent trip LAX-NRT-HKG and return, all flights were early or on-time. The LAX-NRT leg was <b>one hour</b> early, on a 19-year old 747-400.

Well, you can get unlucky and I think a lot of us here have had the experience of delayed flights and misconnections with various carriers. I've flown hundreds of flights on Northwest and my experiences have been good most of the time. I wouldn't hesitate to use the vouchers.

We fly on Northwest a lot (4 flights in the last 3 weeks) and none of our flights were late. We really can't complain as we have not had many late flights in the past 10 years of flying NWA. My brother in law flies them evem more than we do and a lot of overseas flights and he considers them better than most. Maybe we have just been lucky.

Just flew from cincinnati to detroit to amsterdam to uganda and back on NW. I was sure there would be a glitch with luggage with all those plane changes but everything arrived perfectly both going and coming. I've had worse luck on Delta with less connections. Luck of the draw--it happens to everyone sometime.