By SUSAN CAREY The Wall Street Journal Date: 05/23/99 01:00

The 757's toilets overflowed. A hysterical passenger vowed to blow an emergency door and jump into the freezing darkness. A grown man wept and begged to be freed. The air stank. Babies screamed. Adults screamed, too.

Anyone who flies regularly has an airline horror story. But short of a crash or a hijacking, few trips are likely to compare to the one taken by the 198 passengers and crew of Northwest Airlines Flight 1829 over the first weekend of the year. It arrive d about 22 hours late, and was trapped on the tarmac at its destination for nearly seven hours more. The Wall Street Journal has pieced together what it was like aboard that plane, minute by minute.

Fasten your seat belts. It's a bumpy ride.

On Saturday, Jan. 2, 153 vacationers, many decked out in designer resort wear, arrived at the Princess Juliana International Airport on the Caribbean island of St. Martin for the early afternoon departure of Flight 1829. The holidays were over.

The flight was scheduled for five hours, a straight shot back into Detroit, Northwest's largest hub. Most of the passengers were from Michigan, and most were professionals. Some had their children with them.

But from the start, there were glitches. The airport's check-in computers broke down, fouling up seat assignments. Some passengers were given the same seats as Bill and Diane Goldstein, a couple from West Bloomfield, Mich.

Told by attendants to find other seats, the Goldsteins first bristled, then did as they were directed -- by marching into first class and plopping down. A ground agent threatened to throw them off the plane if they didn't return to coach; the dispute e nded when the other travelers moved out of the Goldsteins' original seats. The Goldsteins' act galled many crew members and passengers, but the couple's chutzpah would later come in handy.

Other passengers worried about the weather up north. Barbara Ruskin, a 54-year-old guidance counselor at a middle school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., had been tracking a big Midwestern storm on CNN. It scared her. "How are they going to land?" she asked her husband, Bob. "Honey, it's going to be fine," Mr. Ruskin reassured her.

The blizzard, in fact, was dumping inch after inch of snow in Michigan. But in balmy St. Martin, Capt. Peter Stabler received instructions to proceed to Detroit.

Capt. Stabler, 41 years old and a 15-year Northwest veteran, saw nothing unusual in that; there are almost always ways to beat bad weather. With him in the cockpit was first officer and co-pilot Capt. Robert Patchett. In the cabin were four longtime No rthwest attendants, Barry Forbes, Meg Miller, Dawn March and lead attendant Nikki Ward. They were joined newcomer Doug O'Keeffe.

Flight 1829 took off three hours late. It was over southern Georgia, more than halfway home, when a message flashed on the cockpit computer: "Detroit is closed." The plane was eventually rerouted to Tampa, Fla., and landed at 8:03 p.m. local time.

To some passengers, the Tampa layover alone was enough to make Flight 1829 the worst of their lives. They got little food. And even less sleep. A Northwest ground agent told them the plane would leave for Detroit the next morning at 6:15. But because the flight crew wasn't legal to fly that early -- Union and Federal Administration rules required set hours of rest after a certain amount of time in the air -- the plane didn't take off until after noon. Shortly after 11 a.m., the crew threaded through some of the seething passengers. It had been joined by Chuck Miller, an off-duty Northwest 757 captain who lives in St. Petersburg and wanted to hitch a ride in the cockpit jumpseat. Capt. Miller was tot ing his cell phone.

They expected an uneventful flight.

Additional travelers had come on board, and now every one of the plane's 190 seats was taken. Some infants rode on laps. Northwest catering personnel, figuring Flight 1829 needed only enough food, drinks and ice for the two-hour hop from Tampa to Detro it, ordered two extra beverage carts and big bags of peanut packets removed from the plane.

The flight departed at 12:27 p.m. Passengers were served. In coach it was hot sandwiches -- steak with onions and green peppers or turkey pastrami and cheese. They landed in Detroit at 2:45 Sunday afternoon, nearly 24 hours since the plane left St. Mar tin.

Michigan's Wayne County owns Detroit Metro Airport and is responsible for snow plowing. Eleven inches had fallen at the airport since Saturday, but now the sun was shining. Wind and jet exhaust whipped veils of snow across the tarmac, but all in all, C apt. Stabler thought, "I've seen worse."

So what happened next seemed odd. The air-traffic controllers told him to exit off the runway onto a rarely used taxiway on the far-western edge of the airport, away from the terminal. The taxiway is called Zulu. There was a conga line of other planes already there. At various times that day, that line and others around the airport would include nearly 30 Northwest flights.

From the right side of the plane, the passengers and crew could plainly see the nearest gates, along the C concourse, no more than 400 yards away. Many were occupied; some weren't. Another gate, F-5, was also visible about 900 yards away. It was vacant . A Northwest maintenance hangar was only 250 yards away, visible from the left side of the plane. Capt. Stabler tuned the cockpit radio to Northwest's "gate control," the people who organize the parking of planes. Their message for Flight 1829: "Get in l ine and expect at least a two-hour wait."

A groan rippled through the cabin as the captain announced the news. "Oh jeez, come on!" passenger Michelle Duran, a 34-year-old computer technician and private pilot from New Baltimore, Mich., said to herself. Flight attendant Ms. Miller overheard a 1 2-year-old boy tell his brother: "There's no way I'm spending two hours on this airplane."

A 757 cabin is hardly a commodious waiting room. It has a single, narrow aisle that runs 115 feet from the cockpit door to the rear galley. Along the aisle are 35 rows of seats, most of them in the cramped three-and-three layout of economy. The economy seats are 17 inches wide, as narrow as they get on U.S. commercial jet flights. The interior of the aluminum tube -- navy-blue carpet and seats, red, gray and dark camel accents and off-white walls and bins -- is 7 feet at its highest point, and 11.50 fe et at its widest. Holding tanks for the plane's four lavatories have a total capacity of 55.5 gallons.

Capt. Stabler shut down the 757's two engines, using auxiliary power to keep the jet heated and well-lighted. He opened the cockpit door and invited passengers to drop in for a tour. Many did. The crew let it be known, discreetly, that passengers could use their cell phones. Normally, airlines prohibit cell phones for fear they will interfere with navigation equipment.

Still, there were early signs of rawness. A half hour into the wait, flight attendant Forbes made an announcement: "Does anyone have any videos in your carry-on luggage?" The 757 has an audio-video system but, to save money, Northwest no longer shows f ilms on most North American flights. Three tapes were produced: an old "Star Trek" TV episode, "Citizen Kane" and "The Princess Bride."

"Star Trek" went on. It was the one where an enemy device freezes people in time, imprisoning them in an alien dimension. But with no headsets, the audio had to be piped through the plane's public-address system, one volume fits all. A passenger in eco nomy griped loudly to flight attendants that the sound was interfering with her reading. So the tape was yanked, causing a general outcry.

Capt. Miller, the hitchhiking pilot, was off duty but wearing his uniform. Alerted by flight attendants, the 49-year-old pilot, a 15-year Northwest veteran, marched back and demanded to know who didn't want the video shown. No one spoke up. "OK, put th e movies back on -- as long as they're G-rated," he told the attendants. There were kids back there, Capt. Miller reasoned.

Following "Star Trek" came "Citizen Kane." It belonged to Jamie Hodari, a 17-year-old Bloomfield Hills high-school junior traveling with his younger sister and two babysitters, and he loved the classic. But after 10 minutes, several passengers started booing. "Who put this goofy movie on?" one demanded. "Who would want to watch a black-and-white movie?" yelled another. "Citizen Kane" got the hook. Jamie marveled to his sister about the spectacle of middle-aged adults "acting like obnoxious kids."

"The Princess Bride" fared better.

As the two-hour wait slipped into two-and-a-half, the flight attendants had wheeled out the already-depleted beverage carts. They didn't have any pretzels or peanuts to hand out -- all the extras had gone off the plane in Tampa. Most passengers remaine d fairly good-tempered. Ms. Miller, 37, a 13-year Northwest veteran, watched a dentist organize a betting pool: How long would it take to get to the gate? She laughingly declined an invitation to wager. Nearby, a man with a bag of Doritos joked that they were for sale -- "$1 each."

Conversations were struck up. Mrs. Ruskin, the guidance counselor, was sitting in Row 5 next to Sonya Friedman, a psychologist, author and television commentator from Bloomfield Hills. Eight other members of the Friedman family were on the flight; Dr. Friedman and Mrs. Ruskin chatted a lot about Mrs. Ruskin's fear of flying. Four 20-something passengers started a stand-up euchre game in front of one of the lavatories. Christina Wade, a 32-year-old real-estate agent from Ann Arbor, Mich., played Scrabbl e with her husband.

Elsewhere, however, scattered small rebellions were brewing. Initially, the crew refused to serve alcohol. Some people provided their own from bags of duty-free booze from St. Martin. Mr. Forbes, the flight attendant, warned them that it was prohibited . But as time slipped by, Mr. Forbes, 41 and a 19-year veteran, decided to let them drink.

The cabin crew eventually relented and served cocktails to those who wandered into the galleys to ask. But in the economy cabin, they still charged. At around 5 p.m., Dr. Goldstein, the ophthalmologist whose blustering over seats had caused such a stir in St. Martin, headed back for a gin-and-tonic for himself and a beer for his brother-in-law. Mr. Forbes asked for $7.

"I can't believe you're charging for this," Dr. Goldstein spluttered. He paid, but steamed. Eugene Pettis had a similar reaction after being hit up for $3 for a beer. "Come on!" the 67-year-old director of a Detroit mental-health center groused to his seatmates. "The least they could do is give us free drinks."

Exactly, thought his traveling buddy, Leslie McCoy. He went to the galley and asked for a rum and Coke. "I'm not going to pay," he declared. Mr. McCoy, a 33-year-old artist for the Detroit Police Department, got his drink on the house, and another rule went by the wayside.

Time ticked by. Capt. Stabler played the outside man, making announcements and chatting with passengers. He often praised them: "You're being wonderful. You're so calm. We're all stuck in this together," he said over the loudspeaker. Positive reinforce ment and a little all-for-one, he thought. Can't hurt.

Capt. Patchett mostly stayed in the cockpit listening to gate radio. The 40-year-old, a 12-year Northwest veteran, helped pass the time by tuning a second radio to the day's pro-football games. Monitoring other pilots talking to -- and arguing with -- the hapless radio operator for Northwest in Detroit, the flight-deck crew on 1829 could tell things weren't improving. The 757 that was first up for a gate -- 757s can fit only into certain jetways -- hadn't budged for an hour and a half. Flight 1829 was 30th in line.

Suddenly, there was motion. At about 5:30, controllers ordered pilots on the Zulu taxiway to fire up their engines. Some passengers cheered again as the plane shook to life. It taxied north, with a line of other planes. The jet had been moving for five minutes when it bumped to a halt. In Row 8, Scott Friedman, Sonya's son, peered out the window. A collective groan was rising from other passengers. It took a moment for Scott to realize that the plane's little journey had resulted in it ending up almost exactly where it had started.

"What the heck's happening now?" he demanded.

Capt. Miller was asking the question himself up in the cockpit. The maneuver, it turned out, had been meant to let one plane -- one plane! -- out of the conga line. Capt. Miller, anger rising, broke out his cell phone and dialed Northwest's chief Detro it pilot at the time, Gary Skinner. "It's a nightmare out here," Capt. Miller barked. He handed the phone to Capt. Stabler. "Something has to be done," Capt. Stabler pleaded. But the chief pilot was unable to offer much help. Capt. Stabler phoned Northwes t's ground-service duty manager. "We have minimum people working," the manager reported. "Gates are blocked and broken. I'm working with headquarters."

Capt. Miller was thunderstruck. "We have this phenomenal weather department that can forecast turbulence all over the world," he snorted to the other pilots. "Why didn't they see this storm coming?" An idea formed: "Why don't we just turn around and ge t out of here?"

By now, more than three hours into the wait, many passengers were having similar thoughts. Stephen London, a Toronto software engineer, kept looking at the terminal, tauntingly close, and the Northwest hangar even closer. "Bring the stairs," he said to himself. "Bring the bus. Dump the people."

The trapped pilots, in fact, were suggesting various avenues of escape. One was to concentrate what ground workers there were on just a few gates, pull the planes in, let the people off, and back the planes out again, with crew and luggage still aboard . They thought of using the nearby hangars, and of using other airlines' gates. "Forget protocol," Capt. Stabler urged over gate radio.

But ground control would not authorize any of the moves. (Northwest says it considered these options and others. It says they were too dangerous -- it had stopped snowing but the cold, wind and ice were fierce -- or were otherwise unworkable.) Time aft er time, Capt. Stabler heard the radio operator reply: "We're working on it. Copy that." After Flight 1829 had been stalled for about four hours, Capt. Patchett heard the pilot of another plane announce that a passenger was headed for diabetic shock in an hour. The response: "Roger that."

Tempers were flaring on some of the tarmac-bound planes. A pilot of a Northwest Airbus burst on to the radio, hollering: "I'm about to lose control of the passengers!" In the cabin of Flight 1829, the mood also was souring. The movies were long over. T he beverages were almost gone. There was no more airline food. It had gotten dark. The windchill factor outside was more than 20 below.

Rumors began washing over the now-dim cabin: A baby had been born on one plane; a man had died of a heart attack on another; on another, passengers had gone berserk and were tearing each other and the crew apart. Arielle Hodari, Jamie's 15-year-old sis ter, felt a surge of dread when she heard the rumors. "I'm scared," Arielle told her babysitter, sitting across the aisle in Row 15. "Is it true?" Her babysitter shrugged; she didn't know.

Hunger and thirst intensified, presenting many dilemmas. Mr. Post, the newlywed, knew his wife had some M&Ms, but she was reluctant to open them while other people around her had nothing. Go ahead, eat them, he urged quietly: "You can't share them with everybody."

Arielle unearthed a small box of Frosted Flakes in her backpack and jubilantly announced the find to her babysitter. "I'd eat them in the bathroom if I were you," her babysitter said softly. Arielle was scared again. She scooted to the lavatory and ate the cereal.

Nicotine cravings weren't helping matters, and some people sneaked into the lavatories for a smoke. Mr. Forbes, the flight attendant, didn't bother trying to stop them. Passengers could smell cigarettes, and the smoke alarms were beeping intermittently . Nobody complained.

The wait stretched on. The cabin seemed to shrink. Mr. Pettis, the clinic director, was trying to read Toni Morrison's "Beloved" but couldn't concentrate. Babies were crying. The children behind him kept kicking his seat, and when he asked their mother to make them stop, she flared up. "If you move your seat up, it will stop," she snapped.

It was past 7 p.m. now, and even the flight attendants' reserves of cool were ebbing. Ms. Ward, on top of everything else, worried about her own 17-year-old daughter, home alone in the blizzard. Ms. Ward, a 28-year veteran, was tiring of the cascading passenger complaints.

"There are worse scenarios, folks," she told several complainers. "We didn't land in the Andes. No one has to eat each other."

It didn't seem to soothe anybody. By 7:45, five hours into the wait, Capt. Stabler phoned the Northwest duty manager he had called a couple of hours before -- and even the captain's studied control showed cracks. "People are starting to lose their comp osure here," he yelled at the manager. "People are really irate. I'm afraid somebody will make a panic evacuation."

The manager was unmoved. "You should see what it's like in the terminal," he said. "There are thousands of people in here. There are fistfights. The airport police are arresting people." (Airport officials say there were no arrests that weekend.)

The unraveling of Flight 1829 was picking up pace. Capt. Stabler could feel the situation shifting into what he told himself was a "psychological and emotional dance." People were out of baby formula, out of diapers. Things were happening all at once. A man in first class began hyperventilating. A young woman in coach whimpered that she was having a heart attack. Scott Friedman, a physician, treated the woman -- by pointing out that her arm had fallen asleep, which explained the tingling. "Just shake y our arm," he prescribed.

At about the same time in the rear of the plane, Mr. Forbes, the attendant, was informed that the left lavatory in coach, behind row 26 near door 3A, appeared to be clogged. He could see blue fluid lapping up into the bowl. Mr. Forbes wrapped a garbage bag around his arm and used a rolled-up plastic safety placard to plunge the toilet. He determined that its waste-holding tank was full, but didn't block off the door because the toilet itself seemed to continue receiving waste.

Just as he emerged from the lavatory, a man in his 50s assailed him. "If I were in charge of the situation, I would have us at the gate!" the man yelled, jutting his face close to Mr. Forbes. The stress, the man continued, wasn't helping his heart cond ition; he needed to see the pilot. Mr. Forbes walked him toward the cockpit. "Heads up," Ms. Ward warned Capt. Stabler from her position in the first-class galley. "Here he comes."

Capt. Stabler intercepted the man in the galley. "I'm a stent patient," the man bellowed. "What if I start having trouble?" He began to cry. "What would it take to get us off this airplane?"

Capt. Stabler took the man's hand. "I understand why you feel provoked," he said.

"If we had a medical emergency, that may move us to the head of the line," the man sobbed.

"It really has to be an authentic problem for us to declare that," the captain said.

"I'll do it if it will get us off the airplane," said the sobbing man.

Ms. Ward, standing beside the captain, observed that feigning a medical emergency "will be a federal offense. There are stiff penalties."

The man sniffled, and slunk to his seat.

He had hardly settled in when Sharon Friedman, Sonya Friedman's daughter, had her own crisis. A flight attendant had mentioned that the scene inside the terminal was like "a refugee camp." Something about that image got to Sharon, a 41-year-old psychol ogist and lawyer. She walked forward into first class, leaned her head into the cabin wall and cried. Her husband approached with their 5-year-old son, Gordon, but she shooed them away.

It was about 8:15. Flight 1829 had been on the ground for 5.50 hours.

The 60 gallons of potable water on the plane had almost run out, including the water to the lavatory sinks. The plane had long since begun to smell: a mix of used diapers, dirty clothes and sweat. Mrs. Ruskin, the guidance counselor, thought of it as " the odor of being confined."

There was another odor. The lavatory holding tanks had reached their 55.5 gallon capacity. Mr. Pettis, the clinic director, in seat 32C near the back of the plane, had gone into the right rear lavatory about an hour earlier -- and immediately turned ar ound, repulsed: There were empty beer cans in the sink, the bowl was backed up, the trash bins were stuffed with diapers. Now, he detected a thin stream of sewage oozing from under the door of that lavatory.

"Now we have a health hazard," he blurted to flight attendant Ms. March. She agreed: "These toilets are disgusting." From then on, every time someone emerged from any of the three rear lavatories, a chorus rang out from nearby passengers:

"Close the door! It stinks!"

The five or six lawyers on board were fast becoming the most popular passengers, as others quizzed them about the possibility of a lawsuit. Mr. London, the passenger from Toronto, found one attorney who figured there might be a case against the airline for "false imprisonment." Seizing the moment, Mr. London, 32, circulated a notebook through the cabin. Gathering that it was from a lawyer enlisting clients, more than 50 passengers signed up on behalf of themselves and their families.

In 32D, Mr. McCoy, the police artist, was starting to lose his grip. "I've wasted almost two days of my vacation on an airplane with a bunch of crying-ass kids and big fat people I don't know," he thought to himself. A woman sitting behind him began ca rping about how much she wanted off. Mr. McCoy exploded.

"I'm sick of sitting on this goddamn plane!" he shouted." I watched the sun go down and I'm still sitting in this little chair."

Two rows forward, a man swiveled and ordered Mr. McCoy to watch his language. "Don't tell me what to do!" the police artist roared. "I'm a grown man. I'm going to cuss as much as I goddamn please. If you don't like it, get me off this f------ plane."

As the two men argued, Ms. Ward, the lead attendant, hurried all the way back from first class. "I don't appreciate this," she told Mr. McCoy. He backed off.

More passengers were complaining about hunger. Ms. Ward gave away her own instant oatmeal, and used the last of the hot water to mix it. She gave it to a mother with a wailing baby. Another mom, sitting in the back of economy, demanded to see Ms. Ward.

"What are you going to do about feeding my children?" she huffed.

"Get some food from the terminal!"

"We can't," Ms. Ward replied. "Besides, there's no food in the terminal." Galled, she marched to the cockpit and related the conversation to the pilots. They eyed their own leftovers from lunch. "We haven't touched these sandwiches, but they're ice col d," Capt. Stabler said. Ms. Ward bagged them up and returned to the passenger.

"Ma'am, this is what we're doing about feeding your children," she said, thrusting the sack at the woman. (Later, Ms. Ward would notice that the bag had never been opened.)

Sharon Friedman had settled down since her tears, but she faced a new quandary. Her five-year-old boy was thirsty. But she was holding back the one remaining bottle of water she had in case she ran out of formula for her three-month-old daughter, Shayn a. It hurt to deprive one child over the other. But Ms. Friedman now feared that they would have to spend the night on the plane.

Her sister-in-law, Amy Friedman, Scott's wife, also had an infant, seven-month-old Madison. She had enough formula for one more bottle and she had two diapers. When another mom asked her for a diaper, Amy turned her down. The guilt stung.

By now, flight attendants were about as fed up as anyone, and they took an unauthorized emergency step: They started encouraging passengers to send letters of complaint to John Dasburg, Northwest's chief executive. "Do it for your peace of mind," Ms. W ard told some passengers. One attendant held up the in-flight magazine, open to page 4, pointing to Mr. Dasburg's picture and his letter to customers. It touted Northwest's "wide range of new benefits" and closed: "Have a Happy New Year." Another attendan t urged Ms. Duran, the private pilot: "Write and tell him what a chickens--- operation we're running."

Dr. Goldstein, the ophthalmologist, wasn't impressed. "I don't think Dasburg knows or cares what's going on in Detroit," he told his wife, Diane. "I want to talk to him."

The Goldsteins figured Mr. Dasburg must live in one of the nicer suburbs of Minneapolis. Mrs. Goldstein's uncle lives in one of those suburbs, Edina, Minn. They called Edina directory assistance on their cell phone. To their amazement, they found a lis ting.

The doctor dialed at once and got Mary Lou Dasburg, the CEO's wife, who said her husband wasn't at home. "I'm currently on one of your husband's planes in Detroit," Dr. Goldstein, 35, said. "There are 30 planes on the ground here. He needs to know." As the two talked, passengers in nearby rows leaned in to listen. According to Dr. Goldstein, Mrs. Dasburg promised to call flight operations herself to find out what was going on. (Mrs. Dasburg confirms the call.)

In Row 9, Seat D, Christina Wade, the real-estate agent, had been growing increasingly anxious. She was obsessing on the obvious fact that few planes were moving. She'd had a couple of Bacardi and orange juices. She snapped.

"I've had enough of this!" she screamed. "I have to get off this plane. I'm going to open this door!" Crying hysterically, she put on a cashmere pants-and-sweater set over her shorts and T-shirt and gathered a credit card, her cigarettes and her cell p hone. She prepared to pull the emergency-exit lever next to her seat and leap into the night.

"No, don't do it!" her husband, John, urged. "No! No!" some passengers pleaded. Others made plans to follow her out the door.

Flight attendants positioned themselves in front of the exits, and warned that bailing out would be hazardous and illegal. "An FBI holding cell would be nicer than this plane," Ms. Wade snapped.

"How about a Valium?" Ms. Ward said. She knew that some of the physicians on the plane had some of the tranquilizers. "I can get you a Valium."

"I don't want a Valium!" Ms. Wade roared. "Get me off this f------ plane! I'm jumping!"

Capt. Stabler heard the uproar and raced back from the cockpit. He knelt in front of Ms. Wade, touching her shoulder. "Really, we don't want to open any doors," he said.

Ms. Wade curled up in a ball on the floor next to the emergency exit and wept.

John Wade, 31, tried to lift his wife back into her seat. "Honey, please get out of that corner," he implored. "It's making you claustrophobic."

She wept on, but finally was coaxed back into her seat. Capt. Stabler returned to the cockpit. But Ms. Wade, terror rising again, quickly resolved anew to bail out. She knew pulling the emergency lever would deploy the emergency slide; she figured she could handle the 20-foot drop to the tarmac.

Ms. Wade's sister was also on the plane. Christina walked back to her and simply announced: "I'm going to jump." Christina went back to her seat -- and began loudly setting deadlines: "If we're not moving in 15 minutes, I'm gonna open the door!" By now , her husband was blocking the exit nearest her, while flight attendant O'Keeffe guarded the one across the aisle.

Only Scott Friedman seemed to get through to her. Sitting a row ahead of Ms. Wade, the 37-year-old dermatologist pleaded, "I've got a baby. It's 23 degrees below zero. Once the cabin temperature equalizes, what am I going to do with my baby?"

Amy Friedman didn't entirely share her husband's view. Earlier in the flight, she had asked him whether "one of us could fake a heart attack or something" to get them off the plane. "Honey, if she blows the door, I'm all set," she whispered to her husb and. "I've got blankets." She thought the Friedmans could swaddle their child and follow Ms. Wade down the chute.

Ms. Wade teetered between panic and control, setting deadlines, talking on her cell phone. She threatened again to pop the door. "Are you sure you want to do that, Chrissy?" said her husband. "It's a long way down." She called a local radio station and bellowed: "We're trapped ... I can't believe this bulls---!"

It went on, and it made for macabre theater. Mr. Post, the newlywed from Kalamazoo, walked up to observe. "I'm glad she's not my wife," he thought to himself. Sharon Friedman's five-year-old, Gordon, climbed up in his seat to watch. "Why is she yelling ?" Gordon inquired. "Why can't we just open the door?"

Meanwhile, word of Dr. Goldstein's call to Minnesota had spread. Ms. Ward heard about it, and headed straight to the cockpit.

"Some guy back there just talked to Mrs. Dasburg," she told Capt. Stabler.

His eyes widened. "How? I want to talk to him."

Dr. Goldstein was summoned to the cockpit. His stomach tightened. There was probably some rule against calling the chief executive's wife. Capt. Stabler asked what he had done. "I called Dasburg's house," he confessed. "His wife said he wasn't home."

"Fantastic," the captain exclaimed. "Give us that number."

Capt. Stabler dialed quickly on Capt. Miller's cell phone. It was past 9 p.m. and the plane had been pinned for more than six hours. Mr. Dasburg himself answered.

"We're out of food, out of water," Capt. Stabler informed his boss. The captain's voice was steely, commanding. "Lavatories aren't functioning. We've got a passenger threatening to pop the chute. It's minus-30 windchill. There are active taxiways. It w ould make a very bad news story for Northwest. You've got to do something."

Capt. Stabler got the impression that, despite the many planes' hours-long ordeal in Detroit, Mr. Dasburg did not know how critical things were. The captain elaborated. He felt that if a door opened, there would be 50 people out on the frozen runway. A ccording to Capt. Stabler, Mr. Dasburg replied: "This should never have happened to you guys. We'll get you out of it right now."

Mr. Dasburg, 56, and Northwest decline to comment on any phone conversations. Northwest says "senior executives" were well aware of the crisis.

Capt. Stabler quickly got on the gate radio and told the other stranded pilots: "I have just talked to John Dasburg and something is going to get done." He also told his passengers. "We've called the top dog," he said. "Hopefully, something will get do ne."

Few in the cabin seemed to believe it. But 20 minutes later, at 9:25, gate radio crackled. "1829? Do you have direct access to Fox 5?" That would be F-5, the gate that had been empty for hours. Capt. Stabler had asked several times if he could dock the re, but had been told by ground control that the jetway was malfunctioning. (Northwest says it was never broken, but that the path to it had been blocked by another plane, a contention disputed by Flight 1829's pilots.)

The captain cranked up the engines and eased the plane into motion. Suddenly, gate radio exploded with complaints from other pilots: "Why does he get that gate? We've been waiting longer!" Ms. Wade, the would-be jumper, also erupted again. "He's just d riving around to placate me," she yelled.

The plane edged forward. A woman in the front of the coach cabin stood up and opened an overhead bin. Mr. London from Toronto got up to reclaim his seat in the back with his family. "Just what part of `Sit down and fasten your seat belts' don't you und erstand?" Ms. Ward erupted. "If we lose this gate, you'll have a whole airplane full of people who won't be happy with you." Capt. Miller heard her, stormed out of the cockpit and glowered at the standing passengers. Both sat down.

The jet was towed into the angled parking spot, and ground workers dug out snow from the jetway wheels and stairs. After a few false starts, Flight 1829 docked. The door opened. Capt. Stabler made his final announcement: "I sincerely apologize. There w ere decisions that weren't made, and improper decisions. We have a great group of passengers."

The passengers, numb and exhausted, moved slowly. Many stopped by the cockpit to thank the pilots and shake their hands. But First Officer Patchett thought a few flashed "the look of death."

It was 9:42. They had been on the tarmac for 6 hours and 57 minutes. They had left St. Martin 30 hours and 34 minutes before.

In the crowded, trash-strewn terminal, Ms. Wade told Scott and Amy Friedman that she hadn't blown the door because of their baby. Mr. McCoy apologized to the man he had cursed. Mr. London ran back onto the plane to retrieve his wife's purse, and decide d to snap a few photos of a trashed lavatory. Others vowed lawsuits, and indeed, one of the Flight 1829 passengers who signed Mr. London's list, Tim Koczara, a builder from Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., later became the first named plaintiff in a suit filed by Detroit law firm Charfoos & Christensen against Northwest and other defendants.

Capt. Stabler walked purposefully to the Northwest gate-control office to try to talk to the manager he had yelled at hours before. But there were 20 people buzzing around; the crisis was still on. The captain went home.

It was 10 p.m. Out on the tarmac, five other planes still waited.

Northwest's Response

Northwest says it made mistakes that contributed to the travails of Flight 1829 and the nearly 50 other Northwest planes that were marooned on Detroit tarmacs during the New Year's weekend. But it puts most of the blame on a "once-in-a-generation stor m." The carrier, the nation's fourth largest, says it erred in continuing to send flights into and out of Detroit despite the blizzard. It concedes that its plans for handling "irregular" operations in Detroit were inadequate and that communications broke down between its operations center in St. Paul, Minn., and Detroit. It also cites the fact that fewer than half its usual ground- operations employees showed up for work because of the weather, paralyzing the movement of planes into and away from gates. Equipment failed in the extreme conditions; some of it, the carrier acknowledges, had not been winterized.

Northwest faces at least three lawsuits from passengers who were trapped on the various flights. The airline says the suits have no merit. The episode is also the subject of an FAA investigation, and has spurred three congressional bills and an initiat ive by Vice President Al Gore aimed at giving airline passengers more rights. Ray Vecci, Northwest's executive vice president of customer service, says the company has sharpened its procedures for coping with extreme weather in Detroit and elsewhere. He n otes that Northwest has sent more than 8,400 letters of apology and free tickets to passengers who waited on the ground for more than two and a half hours that weekend. "We created a lot of stress, inconvenience and disruption," Mr. Vecci says, adding tha t Northwest has taken steps "to make sure it never happens again."

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 30, 1999

Answers

This will be just the first day, multiplied beyond count all over the world. Will be amazing to see if any airline actually has the gall to try to operate around Rollover. Too bad the truth will be kept covered as long as possible.

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-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), May 30, 1999.

Yup, scenarios like this wouldn't surprise me a bit. I doubt most will be this out of control, but probably some will.

Interestingly, I notice Ashton and Leska are allready preparing fallback positions in case such things *don't* happen -- the position being that they really *did* happen, but they're being covered up! I'll note for the record that our preparations are against things that can *not* be covered up. If most SNAFU's can be covered up, then we should all celebrate -- this means that most were manageable and recoverable.

It will indeed be a bumpy ride. Try not to put yourself in harm's way, and keep your fingers crossed.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 30, 1999.

No, no, we are not preparing fallback positions. We have always stated that lies and cover-ups exacerbate the Y2K problem. What we said in the above post is that fall-outs will be covered up, and communications will be down and will come back slowly, spottily, and all the complications will therefore be hidden, BECAUSE of systems down!

If life & biz continued as normal, all appearances normal included, then of course Y2K would have been "containable" and we will rejoice! But that appears unlikely.

Not a fallback position. We are absolutely straightforward, and our approach has not changed and is consistent. If anything we see the growing bold disgusting propensity for LIES to be more evidence of nails irreversibly sealing the coffin.

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-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), May 30, 1999.

Ashton and Leska:

I'd like to know which lies you are referring to (I'm not saying there aren't any, by any means. Not to mention a whole lot of wishful thinking).

I feel that in the absence of a crystal ball, the government has chosen to emphasize the (unknown) probability of few problems, rather than the (equally unknown) probability of big or many problems. I regard this as a policy decision, but not a lie. And while I think this decision has the effect of discouraging (or failing to encourage) personal preparations, I doubt it has much effect on actual remediation efforts.

Of course, if your own crystal ball guarantees many big problems, you might regard anyone else's as suspect. My own tends to strongly suggest (but not guarantee) many small problems and a few big ones. But it's been very wrong in the past. I can certainly understand how future expectations can vary widely, under the circumstances. I hardly regard you as liars because your expectations are quite different from my own.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 30, 1999.

people who talk crap about americans pulling together are talking about warm,well fed americans pulling together for people who share their same views and skin color

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), May 31, 1999.

I can imagine this scenario inside of an overcrowded city Y2K shelter, but with additional problems: weapons. Bang! Bang!

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), May 31, 1999.