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On Monday I flew SFO (San Francisco) > DTW (Detroit) > CLE (Cleveland) on Northwest. The DTW > CLE leg of the flight was delayed about an hour but I dealt with it.

My "return" is another story.

My CLE > DTW flight was supposed to leave at 5:10 PM EST. I got to the airport just before 4:00 PM and when I got to the kiosk I got a message to talk to an attendent. They told me the CLE > DTW flight was delayed and I wouldn't make the DTW > SFO flight so they would need to reschedule me. They then thought about it and decided I could still make it.

So I wait for the plane to arrive and after an hour they called my name and said I wouldn't make it. They then told me I would have to wait a couple hours and go CLE > MSP (Minneapolis) > SFO. So I waited and got on that plane and the flight attendant said that she wouldn't take any questions regarding connecting flights. We were about to take off and they said they had to return to the gate due to an electrical problem. We returned to the gate and after almost an hour they said they believed they fixed it.

At this point I was already too late for my MSP > SFO flight and didn't want to go to MSP but I was stuck on the plane. So we took off and after an hour they said that the problem came back and they would have to make an emergency landing at DTW! When we landed at DTW they said a plane was waiting for us to take us to MSP where we would then spend the night in a hotel. Well, I didn't want to go on another flight to another city I didn't care about so I told them to put me in a hotel in Detroit.

It took me seven hours to get from Cleveland to Detroit which is only a two and a half hour drive!

I'm typing this in a Best Western hotel room that is about 40 feet from the freeway. I'll get to SFO sometime around noon tomorrow. I'll update this post if any other disaster comes my way. I'm going to take a break from Northwest for a while. Three (four?) problems in two days of flying...

Update (7/11/08): I'm finally back in California. It's been exactly 24 hours since I got to the Cleveland airport.

The shower in my hotel room had no hot water. It was almost lukewarm... almost. The hotel's breakfast buffet that Northwest paid for sent me to the bathroom immediately afterward and throughout the day.

Oh yeah, before the DTW > SFO flight boarded they announced they had overbooked and wanted volunteers to take a later flight. The reward was $300 toward another Northwest flight. No thanks!

So, that officially makes five significant errors on the part of Northwest Airlines during this trip:

1. DTW > CLE delayed for 90 minutes (7/7).
2. CLE > DTW didn't arrive on time which forced me to take CLE > MSP two hours later (7/10).
3. CLE > MSP had to return to the gate for an hour to fix an electrical problem (7/10).
4. CLE > MSP was diverted to DTW due to above electrical problem that was thought to have been fixed. I was placed in a hotel because they couldn't get me home that night (7/10).
5. DTW > SFO was overbooked (7/11).

Update (7/15/08): After emailing NWA I received a $150 voucher toward my next flight.