North West Airlines

After being miraculously excluded from the stringent security checks at the departure gate at Gatwick airport (see previous op), I headed onto the Northwest Airlines plane. I had been sitting looking at it for well over an hour whilst waiting for boarding, and it was nothing fancy, just the run of the mill DC-10, with the company name and logo on its side. The seating was arranged in a 2-5-2 arrangement across the plane. I had forgotten to say that ...
...one of the 5 seat sections, and this is where I ended up. However this was to my benefit, as the plane was not busy, and myself and another passenger who sat at the other end of the 5 seats shared them for the entire 10-hour flight. The staff could easily have been mistaken as a collection of retired headmistresses, hospital matrons, and failed weight-watchers! (Hence my title). I was surprised as the ‘usual’ flight attendants are slim, ...

Shufflebum 25.03.2002 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

...(GTF), a mid-sized town in north central Montana. This routing meant I had to change 'planes in Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) with a layover of about 5 hours. Cost of the ticket was GBP 280 and the relevant flight numbers are NW43 (London to Minneapolis) and NW709 (Minneapolis to Great Falls). I should point out at this point that I had originally intended to stay in Montana for some time but due to unforeseen circumstances had to return to the UK just ...
...calling the US offices of Northwest and must say that all the staff I spoke to were extremely helpful and courteous. I could have returned on the same day I 'phoned if I was willing to part with an extra GBP 700 (!), but choosing to wait a few days was able to get a return flight by paying an extra GBP 320, which wasn't too outrageous. ---International flight--- Check in at Gatwick (not my favourite airport) was speedy as was progression through ...

cladach29 03.09.2006 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

When deciding upon a choice of carrier for our return trip to Las Vegas in June, price rather than past experience was the key, and not wanting to part with £1000 each for return flights with Virgin Atlantic my wife and I elected to fly with Northwest Airlines (NWA). Personally I had never heard of them, but managed to read one review prior to departure which although evenly balanced didn't leave me feeling like the Virgin experience was going to ...
...Vegas from London Gatwick so we therefore had to fly into Minneapolis change planes and fly onto Las Vegas. In total, rather than a 9-hour journey it took 16 hours however the economy price more than made up for this at £395 per person return. Very cheap indeed considering the season and the fact we would have to change. After arriving at Gatwick a good 3 hours before we were due to depart we collected the tickets and attempted to check-in our luggage. ...

Badger_Boy 05.07.2005 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

It is a fact of life that every single individual aircraft makes a slightly diffrent noise. No two, say, Boeing 747s make the same noise when you're onboard. Yet every NWA plane makes a tremendous din - like there's something wrong with the engine. Which sounds likely, once you've read this. UPDATE 12/8/03: Since I first wrote this op, I've had the misfortune to travel on another 2 NWA aircraft. Yes. And I've decided to write about them. And correct ...
...kind? Oh yes. And because both the flights were really a little worse - I've decided to drop the rating from 3 stars (average) to 2 stars (poor). WARNING: The following section may be very boring indeed. Feel free to skip it out. It’s not entirely relevant, just explaining what the hell I was doing on Northwest Airlines, the first time. It now seems to be an annual thing that my dad goes to a Progress Conference. Every year they’re in a different ...

monkfeesh 20.04.2003 (03.11.2004) · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

I have used Northwest airlines several times in the last two years to fly to Minneapolis from London Gatwick direct, and also to fly internally in the US into and out of Washington Dulles. The flight from Gatwick is nearly always full, and the aircraft in use are DC-10s. These planes are ageing badly, I was surprised to find Northwest still flying them as it seems every other developed nation airline has replaced them years ago. I don't know how ...
...the features of more modern fleet aircraft. There is no seat back TV, the in flight entertainment is by projector on the bulkheads. Unless you're pretty close you can't see what's being projected! Space in economy class is not the greatest, although at 6'4" this is a problem for me on most flights where I don't get upgraded! The seats are old fashioned, and not particluarly comfortable too. The DC10s are scheduled to be replaced some time in this ...

peteshone 14.06.2005 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

...visit family and friends in North America. In total I made 4 flights from London Gatwick (airport code LGW) to Minneapolis St Paul (MSP) and then a connecting flight on to Denver (DEN). Later I flew from Denver to Detroit and after some weeks back to London Gatwick on a direct flight. The first leg of my journeys was comfortable for most of the journey. Boarding the plane occurred with people sitting at the back first, through to those near the ...
...hand. Also, having been in North America for 6 weeks I did see a news report which stated NorthWest Airlines was worst American operator for delays during the year (1999). I don't know if they have improved since then, but I would say the service I experience at the time would support the news report. For those who aren't in a great hurry, and just want a regular airline which doesn't have a great deal special about, NorthWest would be a good option. ...

NESMA 14.04.2001 (22.04.2001) · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

One thing that I never really understood about the military is the need to use commercial airlines to send a large number of people to a location, when we have aircraft that are required to fly everyday anyway. It would seem only logical to just load those aircraft with people and send them on a training mission to that location instead. I mean, I don't see how that could hurt the training any. But the Air Force obviously hasn't totally figured that ...
...American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and finally Northwest Airlines to fly their people around. As I was in the military for a term of 6 years and have just recently gotten out, I have been on so many airplanes with so many different airlines just to go on deployments, go home to see family, or go on vacation, and of course move, that it's rediculus. Customer Service You can pretty much summarize the quality of Northwest Airlines with it's customer ...

wafflebreeder 19.01.2005 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

The trip in question was Gatwick-Minneapolis-Anchorage & return and I was with a party of 5. After reading many bad reviews here & elsewhere about NWA I was ready for anything when I got to Gatwick. On arrival at the gate I have to admit the DC10 does look very dated now, although our plane looked in a lot better shape than the one bound for Detroit whick looked like it had recently seen a very severe hailstorm. Once through the security checks ...
...for the first leg so we had the opportunity to stretch out a bit which is always nice regardless of airline. The transatlantic crossing was pretty much uneventful, we had the groans & creaks of the aircraft during takeoff but once up to cruising altitude the only annoying thing was the noise of the fuelling of the 2nd engine on the tail which is above the rear cabin. The meal we were served was hot and quite edible, I had asked for a childs meal ...

Adavies344 09.03.2004 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

I have been flying with northwest airlines during this whole summer of 2001. I would have liked to use other airlines that i have flyer miles with but northwest was the best option for everything i wanted to do and the only one available. I'll tell you right now that I always fly economy. I wasn't greatly impressed with northwest airlines but it wasn't total crap either. I was somewhat pleased because i found that i had more room in economy than ...
...to find a comfortable position but on northwest it wasn't so bad at all! This was wonderful because i took two very long flights this summer. One from Tokyo to New York and one from Detroit to Beijing. I just got back yesterday on my flight form Detroit to Beijing. It was so much better than I had expected. I was also quite lucky on my flight from Tokyo to New York. Both flights were very long as far as I am concerned and my comfort concerned me. ...

ozcr 19.08.2001 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

...for the first time with North West airlines in october 2000 from La to Honolulu and return.From this trip I was not impressed by this airline service or rather lack of it. We had already been travelling 17 hours before we got to LA, so we where a bit upset to find the Honolulu flight delayed for 4 hours.We were told that there was a Aloha airlines flight that would connect us forward when we passed through imigration, which ment we would have to ...
...we where told the North West aircraft would make up time and therefore we had to wait.....Not want you want to hear after a long flight.So we waited and waited.....and the aircraft turned up 5 hours late, plus an extra 50 minutes to refuel and change crew, adn a six hour flight ahead of us......never again...ive never been so knackered in my life.So I thought I would go to sleep on the plane..........no it was a DC10 and I had a window seat....DC10 ...

bazza1603 28.01.2001 (29.01.2001) · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

I was travelling from Frankfurt,Germany towards Tampa,Florida.On my flight I had to change planes in Detroit,Michigan,one of their home airports.When the plane landed around 5 p.m. we had a 40 minute delay,because of thunderstorms.They announced that all flights from Detroit were not affected,because no one could get out right now.My plane from Detroit to Tampa was right on time at around 7.15 p.m. or so I thought.The plane left the gate and the ...
...the runway before we will get clearance.Around 9.30 p.m. we were still on the runway and the captain decided to get back to the gate to refuel.About an hour later they announced that our flight was canceled and we should leave the plane and proceed to the airlines reservation desk.Well about 10,000 people were stuck in Detroit,no hotel rooms were available and we weren´t even given the usual `Airline-Overnight-Suvival-Kit`.I had to stand in line ...

Superfly25 18.12.2000 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

...here before me doesn't do North West Airlines justice. At least no Mpnichols. Well, perosnally I travel with North West quite a lot from London to Toronto/New York (family ties) because it is 1) CHEAP 2) STUDENT DISCOUNTS 3) GOOD SERVICE (they try as hard as humanly possible to make your journey bearable) 4) NICE EDIBLE FOOD (unlike BA and Virgin! - both of which I have tried and did not impress me a bit). Of course I based the above on the price ...
...you normally pay about 2/3 or sometimes 1/2 of what other major airlines charge - there is an even greater disparity during the busy holiday season. I normally pay around 250 pounds return flights during the peak times (eg, my uni holidays). Compared to about 400 pounds onwards for other airlines. So in conclusion I would recommend this airline to people who don't mind smaller seats. ...

angela888 07.12.2000 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

InJanuary 2008 I booked flights to New York with NWA, travelling on October 25th for 5 days. When my husband and I arrived at Humberside airport we were told that we had been put on standby as the flight was so overbooked. We were told we would have to try to sort things out when we arrived in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam we met up with quite a lot of other people who had been put on standby. When we questioned why we were on standby when we had bought ...
...told that they didnt take that into consideration. So we could have bought tickets the day before the flight and got on with no problem. In the end we did get on the flight, but some people were told they would have to wait until the next day. We started our return journey yesterday. What a nightmare! Our seats were extremely cramped, in the middle of a row of 4. So we didnt feel able to get up and go to the loo when we felt like it as it would ...

RedJune 01.11.2008 (31.10.2008) · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

...The reason we flew with North West airlines was because they were the cheapest, and they werevery good, apart from the fact that there planes are quite often delayed, and we know other people that said the same. If you dont mind about being delayed then there ok, but if you need to be somewhere e.g. for a connecting flight then its quite risky to fly with them! ...

wior85 18.07.2000 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines

I travelled Northwest from London Gatwick to San Francisco International via Detroit Wayne County and I could npt regret the decision more. The main motivation was financial, at a mere 199 pounds + tax it was at least 50% cheaper than the next best deal from Virgin. In hindsight I would willingly have paid twice what I actually did. The flight time including the connection was some 16 hours, sufficiently unbelievable in itself, but the troubles began ...
...the least friendly staff in history, curt and unhelpful. We were told that the plane was too hevy and would have to unload people and luggage. We boarded the plane, eager to reach our destination, only to be told that (after an hour sat on the runway) the plane was too heavy and the people + luggage which had been asked to fly a day later wopuld now leave the plane. Some 25 people were removed and their, a process which took 5-6 hours. During the ...

mpnichols 29.10.2000 · Read full review
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Review of North West Airlines