Archive for the 'Northwest Airlines' Category
July 10 2008
Northwest became the latest airline to introduce new fees: Just as with other airlines, it’ll cost you $15 to check your first bag. More annoyingly, they’ve introduced a “fuel-surcharge” for frequent flyer tickets (details here) - basically $25 for US flights, $50 for trans-Atlantic, and $100 for trans-Pacific. Oh, and they’ve upped their telephone ticketing fee to $25.
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April 16 2008
OK, I lied. I have a few more notes on the merger. Today I wanted to mention what I call the Fallacy of the Larger Route Map. One of the key benefits that Delta is mentioning in the merger talk is that there is little overlap in the Delta and Northwest route maps. This would suggest untold growth as the new airline would have a huge footprint in the world.
This is a fallacy. First off, airline mergers don’t fail because of the route map. Routes are important, obviously. But I cannot think of a single merger that succeeded (did any of them succeed?) or failed because of route-related issues. Non-overlapping routes are always mentioned when a merger is announced, but, as the Wall Street Journal points out today, routes and entire hubs are frequently shed following a merger (see AA/Reno Air; US Airways/PSA; United’s purchase of Pan Am’s Latin routes).
Plus, and this is especially true with two airlines in the same alliance, I’m not sure exactly how much new revenue they’re going to be capturing. If you wanted to fly from Minot to Bucharest, a NW/DL combination was your best option before the merger. And it’s the same option now. No new demand is generated. Theoretically you could take some capacity out of the market, but how much? You need the capacity to feed the slew of hubs the combined carrier now has and swears it isn’t shuttering.
No, the Larger Route Map is a canard. Mergers fail because of labor issues, because of operational issues, because of reservation systems, because of cultures. And when it’s two huge airlines these issues aren’t minimized - they’re brought to the forefront. This won’t be a success because they’re capturing Minot-to-Bucharest traffic; this will be a success because (by some miracle) they are able to make NW’s pilots happy, and because they can get the employees to play nice, and because they can keep flights taking off on time, and because they can somehow combine the reservations systems, and because the massive merger undertaking doesn’t cause a collapse during thunderstorm season. And, you see what I’m getting it. Beware the Route Map…
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April 15 2008
I’m not going to write much about the Delta - Northwest merger because you’ll find plenty about it elsewhere, but there are 2 points I’d like to make:
- This is not a done deal. There will be significant pilot opposition to this, and that should not be discounted.
- In theory - theory - I can understand doing this if you shut down a hub or two (Memphis comes to mind) and laid off a bunch of people, cutting a bunch of cost out of the system. Perhaps, then, I’d understand how they’ll generate some cost savings. But that’s not the message. In an email, Northwest says that they won’t be eliminating any hubs or any service to small towns. Now, I’m guessing that is one giant load of poop, as how could you possibly save two struggling carriers by simply jamming everything they have together. That doesn’t really make any sense (as if the airline industry is run by sense).
I have the feeling that I’m missing something, but if neither one of these airlines could be successful longterm on their own in an extremely difficult environment, how would focusing on merging these airlines together (instead of the actual airline operation) improve matters? And when United and Continental get together (as rumored) - look out. As I’ve mentioned before, this will be an operational mess the likes of which we’ve never seen. I’m an optimist about this industry, and I cannot conceive how how this can all work out.
I’m done.
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April 14 2008
You’ll read about this everywhere else, so I just wanted to make sure you saw that Delta and Northwest could announce a merger as soon as Tuesday. Blah blah blah pilots seniority, blah blah blah consolidation, blah blah blah crazy idea, blah blah blah two wrongs don’t make a multi-billion dollar right.
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March 17 2008
(Thanks, as always, View from the Wing):
Northwest Airlines is offering $50 cash back when you use PayPal to buy a ticket of $250 or more for travel between April 1 and June 14. Tickets must be purchased by March 27th.
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February 21 2008
American Airlines launched service between Flint and LaGuardia last August and, surprise surprise, shortly thereafter Northwest announced the same flights. Incredible! As you are probably thinking, Northwest didn’t want that route, they just didn’t want anyone encroaching on their lucrative New York to Detroit market (Flint is about an hour north of Detroit). Well, if that’s what you were thinking, you were probably right: American announced that they are dropping the route after seeing their planes flying about 40% full.
This was also the first time I’ve seen airport officials (in this case, Flint’s airport officials) complain about new competition. Even they knew that Northwest was only coming in to drive American out. Which is, as I noted 45 words ago, exactly what they did. To be fair, Northwest says they are “committed” to the route, which means that they’ll wait about 60 days before they cancel it.
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February 19 2008
The NY Times is reporting that Delta and Northwest are close to announcing a merger, an announcement of which will supposedly be shortly followed by Continental and United joining forces.
You’ll read plenty of commentary about these mergers elsewhere, so you don’t need me to analyze the minutia, but let me say this: if you thought flying last summer was rough, just wait until 4 of the country’s largest airlines are trying to jam themselves together during the summer travel season. We will be in a level of disaster that we’ve never even considered. Ask your friends who fly US Airways how well their merger went. Now envision that on a much larger scale. Plus thunderstorms.
One word for your summer travel plans: drive.
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September 06 2007
You may (or may not) remember that Northwest announced nonstop flights from LaGuardia to Dallas as a way of getting back at American for launching nonstop flights from LaGuardia to Minneapolis. Well, they’ve come to their senses and have decided not to launch that flight, instead using the slots to fly nonstop to unserved markets such as Des Moines and Flint. Good to see a little sanity in the operation.
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August 16 2007
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the crash of Northwest flight 255 outside of Detroit, an accident that killed all but 1 of the 155 people on board the flight to Phoenix. You may remember that, miraculously, a 4 year old girl named Cecelia Cichan was the sole survivor of the flight. The link to the story above offers a bit of a history of her remarkable life since that day.
She was adopted by an aunt and uncle who made it their mission to provide a normal childhood for their niece, who lost her parents and brother in the crash. They changed her last name, moved her from her Arizona hometown, and had court records sealed so media could not track her. Now, at 24, she has graduated from college and gotten married. By all accounts she has held up extremely well, though until recently she did not interact with the surviving families from the crash.
I lived outside of Detroit for 7 years, and this crash was burned into the collective memory of the city; certainly every time I drove by the crash site near the airport I thought of how unthinkable it was that 1 little girl could’ve survived when 154 others did not. It’s such a testament to her relatives that she was able to thrive, anonymously, for the past 20 years, despite the horror she saw when she was a child.
Check out the column in the link - I was pretty moved by it.
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August 03 2007
Northwest’s summer of discontent may be over: The carrier announced that it has reached an agreement with pilots that should keep all (most?) of their scheduled flights in their come the end of the month (this would be a stark difference from the past 2 months, when the end of the month has led to a bunch of canceled flights). Another way to put it: Northwest was selling seats on flights it knew it wouldn’t be flying. Nice. I think this goes to the heart of why people tend to hate airlines: if we cancel, we’re charged $100, if the airline cancels, well, um, nothing happens. You’re outta luck. Go fly someone else (unless you live in Detroit or Minneapolis, where you don’t have much of an option).
In any case. The deal covers a bunch of pilot rules that aren’t important here, but just know that if you’re a pilot and you show up for work every day between now and September 3rd, you’ll get a bonus of 15% of eligible earnings. Yes, you did read that correctly. A bonus for showing up to work for a month.
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Northwest Introduces Baggage Fees, Frequent Flyer Redemption Fees