I have flown Northwest the last 3 years to Bangkok, Thailand. The last year was the best as I was able to use my miles to upgrade to business class. Wonderful service. The second year my suitcase did not arrive with me,but they called later that night and the suitcase was delivered the next morning.

Someone mentioned that they had never heard of an engine falling off a commercial jetliner. It DOES happen, and although it is an emergency, the plane should be flyable (the engine actually doesn't weigh a lot in the overall scheme of the plane). In fact, planes are designed to allow safe detachment of engines in-flight in the event of a fire.

A horrible chain of events precipitated by an engine falling off did bring down an American DC-10 in Chicago in 1979, but lessons learned from that disaster have made all planes much safer.

Again, I am not a huge fan of NWA, but I can't remember the last fatal crash they had. Their safety record is fine. The last time they were in the news was that nasty winter when they were leaving planes for hours on the tarmac without basic services for the passengers trapped inside. And they've taken steps to ensure that never happens again. I think....

Returned last night from a trip to FL- flew NW round trip, two legs each way. Had delays on the Madison outbound and missed our connector - our original flight was delayed due to weather (not their fault) but the flight we were eventually put on was pulled back to the gate and 13 people were marched off - we were overweight by 2500 pounds. On the return, there was no crew to fly the plane from Detroit to Madison. We had to wait while they got the on-call pilots and attendents in. Sigh.

HappyCheesehead, were these actual NORTHWEST flights (flight #s 1-1999), or were they Northwest AIRLINK flights? I believe that there are Mesaba flights available on some of that routing, as well as Northwest and Pinnacle flights. From my home airport, Mesaba flight numbers are usually 4-digits beginning with a "3". Pinnacle flights are 4-digit #s beginning with a "5".

Mesaba pilots appear to be poised to strike in mid-January if there is not a resolution of their years-long contract negotiations. In the past, it's been easy to notice deterioration in service in the period leading up to a possible strike.

I'm suggesting to people traveling after Jan. 8 on Northwest that they may want to consider avoiding Mesaba flight numbers until there is a better picture of what might happen with the labor situation there.

Happy......when the pax were "marched off", do you know how it was decided which pax were selected? I've witnessed no more than 2 people being de-selected for flight but not heard of that many.Just curious.......S

You can check on any airlines safety record by going to: http://airsafe.com/airline.htm
It states that Northwest has had 4 fatal events since 1970 and the last one in 1993. American leads with 12 and United follows closely with 11 since 1970.

Hi Flyboy & BeachBoi:

Yes, the flight out (MSN to DET) was Pinnacle. We were so overweight because our entire (missing plane)flight was put onto the next MSP out bound. We had been pulled away from the gate and were advised they needed to check out our weight ratio and then we would depart. Next message from the pilot said we were returning to the gate as we were 2500 pounds overweight and 13 passengers had to come off before the plane could take off.

I might have added "Marched Off" for dramatic effect, (LOL) BeachBoi. Hubby & I volunteered to be part of the 13 since we were part of the reason WHY the plane was overloaded, and we knew we had already missed our connecter in MSP anyway. Bummer, as we had been upgraded to first class. My husband did not want to get off the plane but I insisted it was right for us to do so.

On the other hand, the missing crew from DET to MSN on the return WAS a regular NW flight. They gave us no reasonable explaination as to why there was no crew to fly our plane.

We just flew on NW from ONT to MSP on 12/17 and whole flight was perfect. The check in and gate people (and Govt. TSA personnel) at ONT were great and our whole flight crew was great. We left ONT a few minutes late due to the aircraft arriving late but we made up time and made it in to MSP as few minutes early. We have no complaints in many flights in NWA. Have flown many other carriers in recent years also and have to admit I have been late more times on all of them than NWA.

I fly Northwest all the time. Have frequent flyer miles with them. Never had any problems. They were pretty on time, ride is smooth, service good. No complaints here.

I've 150k miles logged with NWA. I have no problems with Northworst and continue to fly them frequently. If I have a choice in carrier I'll choose Southwest or Jet Blue but that is difficult from RSW airport. LMF