melann78

Has anyone taken Northwest Airlines on an International flight?

We are going on our honeymoon in May, and our travel agent found pretty cheap tickets to Italy through NWA...I personally, have never flown with them, and have kind of had the impression that they weren't that great.

I checked to see what kind of plane we would have for the long flight over and its something called an MD10? What that heck is that? It's not even a 747! It looks like a large plane, but I wonder how comfy? When we went to Germany over the summer, we flew American and it was pretty cool...everyone had their own personal tv's...pretty comfy flight.

Any thoughts on NWA?

Thanks!

Curious

melann78,

Your header question was " Message: Has anyone taken Northwest Airlines on an International flight?"

The answer is yes, people have taken Northwest Airlines on an international flight.

I'm sure if you would go to the NWA website, you would be able to find out the details of the MD10.

Curious

soccr

The advantage to the new system is that I can click on "Curious" and find that just about every single posting Curious makes is a criticism of how someone posted or how stupid their question is or that they were stupid not to go to some website instead of posting here or some similarly unhelpful, negative, nasty comment with almost no contribution to the information being exchanged.

That said, we can certainly suggest that an MD10 is probably the old DC10 (MD=McDonnell Douglas), and point melann78 to http://www.seatguru.com/northwest/DC1030.shtml for information on it -- which says that most DC10s are about to be retired. My memory of flying on DC10s is that it isn't much fun in you are in the center 5-across coach section. So a lot might depend on your ability to get seats on the outside, just you and new spouse. But I'm also guessing from the stats on seatguru that there isn't much legroom compared to, say, AA.

melann78

Hey curious,

Since you seem to know everything, what in the heck are you doing on this website......surely you don't need anyone's help on here!

And I'm sure you knew what I meant by my question "Has anyone taken Northwest Airlines on an International Flight?"...duh, has anyone on these forums??? I mean, there are tons of airlines out there and maybe people on here have taken other airlines.

Do me a favor, next time I ask a question, I'm not asking YOU!

Elainee

I flew Northwest NYC to Beijing, but we flew business class. Fine. We took Northwest because they required to least number of points for business for that flight. We also are going to Italy in May, but stopping in London. We are flying BA so we get the free stopover.

doc_

Not sure who is worse,the know it alls here now or the childish trolls. Nothing worse than being critisized for asking a question.Thats what this forum is for. BTW,soccr was right on.

Andrew

I flew Northwest to Paris/from Amsterdam last fall (an open jaw flight) and all flights were terrific, perhaps the best of all the air travel I did in 2002 on American, Continental, and Delta. No, our planes did not have TV's (I think one flight from Detroit to Paris was a 747, the other was a DC10) but all were comfortable (I'm a tall guy) and service was great.

Not sure where you got the impression that Northwest wasn't "that great", but I'm sure you can find disgruntled people out there who will tell you the same about every airline operating. I've even seen criticism of JetBlue.

Andrew

Quinty

Dear Melann78,
Last night I just got back from Europe - flying Northwest. I fly from LAX and chose to break up the flight by stopping in Detroit. The domestic seating was very cramped. I fly a good bit and it was the most cramped of all carriers (United, Continental, American, US Air, Delta,).

However, the transatlantic flight was a little more spacious. I think your airplane might be a DC 10? That is what we took, it has the 2-5-2 seating configuration. Are your seats an AB type or are you in the middle? If you don't think it's a DC 10, then go to google and type in "Northwest airlines seating charts" or something of that nature and you will get a screen with all the Northwest planes from which to choose.

I liked the service. I used to like American but it has gone downhill fast. Northwest had shockingly decent food, lots of blankets and pillows.

Flyboy

melann, I have taken many international flights on Northwest and I don't think you should hesitate to fly them. Be sure to hit the website: www.nwa.com -- and sign up for the WorldPerks program. Go through the promotions and make sure you register for anything they have going with the WP #. You may well find it handy because there are quite a few miles that you can roll up on that trip and even having as few at 5,000 in your account can open the door for a nice "Cash & Miles" deal down the road with NWA.

You can look at the seating configuration on the international DC-10 by going to this link:

http://www.nwa.com/travel/trave/seatm/dc1030/index2.shtml

I don't know what the retirement schedule is for the DC-10, but they are being replaced over the next couple of years on international routings. Personally, I like them because of the 2-5-2 seating (but as mentioned earlier, DO stay out of that middle row!)

Happy Contrails!

talltraveler

I have flown both Northwest and KLM (their foreign partner) to Europe. If you have the chance, choose KLM, even if it's a few dollars more. The KLM attendants are so much nicer and the service is so much better. I'm 6'0" and seem to have my knees squashed by the person in front of my on all my NWA flights (KlM seemed a little better but it might have just been the nicer service and the more accomodating people in front of me on those flights). What out for those middle seats of 4 or 5 in a row as you will have people crawling out over you the whole time.
Happy honeymoon!

Jed

NWA and KLM are strong partners. We booked from Newark to Nairobi with NWA and wound up on KLM all the way.

NWA is fine. We also flew NWA to China.

Jed

I am not defending Curious's brusk reply, but the info which was presented was helpful. Many times people don't know what info is available on the net, and how to access it.

aurelia

Northwest is okay...just okay. They tend to use older planes, but 'what the heck'. if the price is right. By the way, I began a new topic re: translantic jitters, thinking it was a perfectly good thought, and got flamed, absolutely flamed!! by someone named LEW. Some folks just want to fight. Result: they (Fodors) removed the thread, so can't get any legit. responses to my query now.

ejcrowe

For what it's worth, I flew NWA from Jackson, MS to Berlin via Amsterdam last winter. Though my domestic connections were NW flights, on the flight directly to Amsterdam I was on KLM. I'm not a world travler, but I do fly for business about once a month, and I found the DC10 comfortable. Then again, I'm only 5'3".

What I liked about the flight (apart from it's being about 1/3 capacity, so that I got to stretch across two seats) was the attitude of the attendants--very friendly and helpful. Plenty of hot towels, cheesecake and Grand Marnier were being passed out in coach, which I appreciated.

Except for during the holidays, every time I've traveled since 9/11, there has been plenty of room on the planes. That, coupled with the fact that y'all are newlyweds, should be enough to get you and your fiance the two seats by the window.

Have a great trip and congratulations! Italy is amazing in May, you'll love it.

enlightened

Be careful when purchasing promotional fares from Northwest Airlines. Although it is not mentioned in the rules, if you need to make a change, you are not allowed to use the ticket towards another promotional fare -- only towards higher "published" fares. I found out the hard way.