MN - Northwest passengers delayed 9 hours before flight canceled

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The Associated Press

EAGAN, Minn. (December 13, 2000 12:01 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Northwest Airlines apologized to passengers at Detroit Metro Airport who were shuttled on and off a plane three times over nine hours because of mechanical problems - before their flight was ultimately canceled.

Frustrated passengers used their cell phones to call 911 on Monday and tell emergency dispatchers they wanted off the plane, said passenger Barbara Lefebvre, 45, of Milwaukee.

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

Any problem at Detroit sets off alarms for Northwest, which has worked to rehabilitate its customer service reputation since stranding 6,240 travelers on its planes there - some for more than eight hours - during a Jan 2, 1999, snowstorm. Northwest now has a policy that passengers not sit on grounded planes for more than three hours.

Northwest apologized to the passengers Tuesday and gave them $200 each to cover expenses for the previous night, plus a free round-trip ticket. And passengers who missed connections to cruise ships were flown at Northwest's expense to ports where they could join their ships.

Flight 997 bound for Miami was set to leave Detroit at 10:25 a.m. Monday with 139 passengers.

After the initial delays, blamed on a broken defogger on the cockpit windshield and a generator problem, the pilot decided at around 8 p.m. that freezing rain wouldn't allow a safe takeoff, said Andrea Newman, vice president for state and local affairs for the airline in Detroit.

And once the passengers reached the gate, they were met by police because a passenger had made threatening remarks, Newman said.

To compound the situation, gate agents mistook the problem as a weather cancellation. Airlines aren't obligated to pay expenses for stranded travelers, and many passengers slept at the airport.

Newman said Northwest agents should have offered hotel rooms, transportation and food for stranded passengers. Northwest's guidelines say it pays expenses for passengers it inconveniences by mechanical problems.

http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500289600-500458713-503030668-0,00.html

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), December 13, 2000

Answers

Doris, I cannot imagine waiting on an airplane nine hours for it to take off. Why do people tolerate this?

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), December 14, 2000.

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