Not all of you may realize how much I have defended Northwest in the past. I have been delighted with their service, and have only had a couple of maintenance delays (of course, all on the same day) in the past four years.
I am an ardent Boeing fan. I am also an ardent Airbus A3[234]0 hater. I follow the discussions on the A320 (and derivatives) in comp.risks, and have been lucky to only have ever flown on an A320 once (and that was because I had missed my previous night's flight and *had* to be somewhere the next dinnertime, and the first flight out was an A320). In the past I have planned all of my flights by aircraft type -- I'll fly on anything, even DC-10s (with a questionable enough safety record) before I'll fly A320s. This meant long layovers, as Northwest has been adding more and more A320s (and thus having more and more maintenance delays on said A320s).
Last year I was concerned by Northwest's addition of so many A320s to their trunk routes that I started switching my flying to Delta. But Northwest did one thing to lure me back. They inagurated a nonstop from Boston to Seattle. I live in Boston and my husband's parents live in Seattle, so we fly that route quite frequently. The equipment used was a Boeing 757. We flew this route at least four times since the inaguration last May. We had favorite seats (9D&9E on the first exit row), favorite check-in times (since the flight was at 5:30 we'd go to the airport in the *morning* and check our bags, then take public transportation to the airport after work, meaning we didn't have to deal with the traffic by taking a cab), and great service (instead of snack-snack we'd get dinner-snack with snacks during the movie, too). So we kept flying Northwest.
Four days ago I installed my online OAG update. I was checking on a flight that we're taking in November, from Boston to San Francisco. Just out of habit I checked the Boston to Seattle flight. Equipment change, effective September 15. From 757 to A320. More checking found that the mid-afternoon 1-stop-no-change-of-plane 757 had changed to a DC-10. And the morning 1-stop-etc-etc had changed to an A320 also.
My complaint letter to Northwest is included below. I don't really expect a response, though I would definitely *appreciate* one. As far as I'm concerned the matter is closed. With my Boston-San Francisco flight in November we would have re-qualified for Preferred status.
==snip for letter==
To Whom It May Concern:
I have been a loyal Northwest customer for more than four years. My husband has been a loyal Northwest customer for almost eight years. We have both accumulated large amounts of mileage under your frequent flyer plan, and have even qualified for Northwest WorldPerks Preferred Status.
My husband's parents live near Seattle, Washington. We were ecstatic to find that you had started a Boston-Seattle non-stop flight as of last May, and especially happy that the equipment on the flight was a Boeing 757-251, an aircraft we consider one of the best airliners available.
We subscribe to the OAG online travel service, and have found out that your equipment on the Boston-Seattle nonstop has changed from a Boeing 757-251 to an Airbus A320-200.
We believe that there are vast problems with the A320's cockpit interface, which have been major contributing factors, if not *the* major contributing factors, in three crashes (so far). As computing professionals, relying on computers for such simple things as toilet flushing as well as such sophisticated things as flight and engine control systems makes us wince. We work with computers every day and feel that, with current hardware and software technology, computers are not yet of a standard to be relied upon for every single judgement.
More than once we have walked through Northwest hubs and seen A320 flights marked as "DELAYED". On one occasion, we were on a flight from Detroit to Boston, which was scheduled to leave about two hours later than an A320 flight; *even though* our flight was delayed for several hours by mechanical problems, it still arrived in Boston *before the A320 flight had taken off*.
Obviously the A320's systems are not reliable enough to prevent shutdowns on the ground -- so who's to say they wouldn't shut down in the air?
Due to what we consider a drastic reduction in safety which prevents us from considering the Boston-Seattle nonstop, we will be taking our future air travel with another airline. (We note that the Boeing 757, like the A320 a relatively new, narrow-body twinjet, has had no crashes since its debut, while the A320 has had 3 in far less time.)
Northwest wrote me back, and I posted that letter to rec.travel.air on 8 November 1993.