Delays and NW Flight Alerts

On the way home today, weather at MSP put the flight of my first leg into a holding pattern for 20 minutes. We had also left Winnipeg late due to late arrival of the incoming flight, so I was a little worried about making my connection. Normally I do not worry too much when delays are due to weather at the connecting airport, because delays arriving often mean delays in departures too.

But with Northwest I do not get an immediate update of flight status, as I do with Delta. The NW flight alert messages only come once, and do not inform you of delays. In contrast, the Delta messages, following the initial flight notification, are sent as soon as delays occur. In fact, they sometimes arrive before the delay appears on the monitor screens or is announced by the gate staff. Any change of 10 minutes or more in the last communicated time, is followed by another message. So you always know where you stand, or wait :-).

With Northwest the lack of delay messages means that, instead of getting the information I need as soon as I turn on my phone after landing, I have to access the NWA web-site and look up the information. Only then will I know whether to sprint off the plane or not. Another annoying feature of the NW flight alerts is that they do not tell you from which gate the flight is departing. Instead you are told at which gate the flight will arrive at the other end. Who cares :-/.

Of course I can get all this information as soon as I deplane, assuming I can find a bank of monitors near the gate and hopefully on the way to the next gate. Or stand in line and wait for the gate agent to look on their list. I prefer to know as much as possible before deplaning, information is power!

On this trip, trying to look up the next flight status at NWA.com, I found that the bookmark for my phone's browser was now pointing to an incorrect page. Thanks NW for that change. By the time I had managed to find and navigate to the right page, we were at the gate and deplaning.

P.S. my connecting flight was indeed delayed, just enough so that as I walked up to the gate the baording process started. So I will not be shortening my weekend with an unscheduled overnight stay in Minneapolis.
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