Passengers Complain of 9-Hour Plane Ordeal

D E T R O I T, Dec. 14, 2000 -- Northwest Airlines had said it would never happenagain: more than 6,000 passengers trapped in planes at the Detroitairport for more than eight hours during a 1999 snowstorm.

But during Detroit’s worst winter storm since, 139 passengersbound for Miami say they were stuck in one plane and then anotherfor about seven hours during mechanical and weather delays Monday.The entire ordeal, including two breaks in the terminal, lastedjust over nine hours.

A few frustrated passengers with cell phones called 911,demanding someone get them off the plane, passengers said.

‘They Held Us Hostage’

“They held us hostage,” said Patty Mackay, 42, of Milwaukee.“They kept lying to us, saying to us we were going to leave. Andwe never did leave.”

Northwest officials, still stinging from the first fiasco, saidthe incident was isolated, and they quickly tried to compensate thepassengers with flight vouchers and cash.

“The general reaction was very positive,” Northwest spokesmanJon Austin said Wednesday. “People understood the weather. Theyunderstood there was a lot of effort there, but not everyone wasdelighted to go through it.”

Problems at Detroit set off alarms for Northwest, which hasworked to rehabilitate its reputation since the 1999 snowstorm,when more than a dozen planes were left stranded on runways — somewith overflowing toilets and no food — because plows couldn’t clearthe airfield. Northwest policy now says passengers must not bestuck on grounded planes for more than three hours; that policy wasnot violated this time, the airline said.

Conspiracy of Events

Monday’s ordeal was caused by a combination of problems, Austinsaid.

Passengers were aboard Flight 997 and ready to leave at 10:25a.m. when a windshield defogger problem stalled the plane at thegate.

The passengers stayed in their seats until Northwest switchedthem to a different plane, which backed away from the gate about 1p.m., but generator troubles held them up again.

When the mechanical problem wasn’t solved by 3 p.m., the planereturned to the gate so the 139 passengers could get off andstretch their legs. Twenty-nine passengers gave up and bookedTuesday flights instead.

The generator repairs were completed by 5 p.m., and with thepassengers back on board, the plane tried to leave again.

That’s when the snow changed to ice. The pilot waited.

At 7:40 p.m. — 9 hours and 15 minutes after they first tooktheir seats — the passengers disembarked, and the flight wascanceled.

Weather-Related?

But for the passengers, the ordeal wasn’t quite over. Gateagents declared the cancellation weather-related, meaning theairline wasn’t obligated to pay expenses for the strandedtravelers. Many of the passengers ended up sleeping at the airport.

Northwest officials said Wednesday that the agents should haveoffered them hotel rooms and food.

Austin said that when the passengers reached Miami on Tuesday,they were given a letter of apology, a voucher for a freeround-trip ticket and a $200 check to cover expenses. Passengerswho missed connections to cruise ships were flown to ports wherethey could meet them, he said.

“We will use our best effort every day to get people where theywant to go when they want to get there,” Austin said. “Some daysthe weather will slow us down, but the commitment to what we’retrying to provide our customers isn’t going to change in cases likethat.”

400 Flights Canceled

In all, Northwest canceled about 400 flights through Detroit onMonday. In some cases, the flights were canceled in advance, withNorthwest calling passengers at home in accordance with the reformsthat followed the 1999 storm.

Glenn Engel, an airlines analyst with Goldman Sachs, saidNorthwest has posted solid scores on on-time performance, baggagehandling and consumer complaints since the 1999 fiasco.

“Northwest has about 2,000 flights a day,” Engel said. “Whenyou have that many, things are bound to go wrong, and sometimesthey go wrong in batches.”