My NWA nightmare

I was returning home from a conference in Sarasota this past Sunday. This was the complaint I filed to NWA.


I arrive at TPA international with my traveling companion at 2:38pm for a 3:26pm flight. We are dropped off at the curb and I went up to what I thought was the NWA counter. The man behind the counter asks me where I am going and tags my bags for travel to Detroit. Then he announced that he was our skycap and haggled us for money. I gave him a few bucks and he then says "You must check in now." I thought we'd already done so but he is only the skycap so we needed to go to the kiosk or counter to continue check in.

We used the exterior e-ticket check-in kiosks. To our surprise, the computer did not print out boarding passes but indicated we were past the 45min before departure time check-in limit and were to go to the internal counter. We did, and the woman behind the counter told us matter-of-factly that we had just missed our flight. Now, it was still at least 42 minutes before departure time. Our bags had been checked in already, but by the time we got around to using the kiosks it had passed the 45 min cutoff that NWA apparently enforces at TPA. Having never gone to TPA I didn't realize this was a strictly followed guideline. At that moment the airport supervisor "Annette" was standing silently by the lady we were talking to. She offered no assistance and silently watched as the ticketing lady told us the only hope was to standby for the 8am flight the following morning. If we hadn't haggled with the skycap or we had gone to the e-ticket kiosk first this would not have happened. My mistake was thinking the skycap would check us in completely, which happens at most other places I've used a skycap. We were not happy, but took the standby tickets nonetheless and sat down to plan what we would do in the meantime.

After sitting for a few minutes a new counter lady appeared. We went up to her and her demeanor was completely different from Annette and the previous ticketing lady. She called the gate to see if all our tickets had been given out. Had this been done the first time we wonder if we could have gone on the flight. She gave us standby tickets to the 5:33pm NWA#489 flight that we hadn't even heard about previous to this. Annette at this time walked over and told her that she didn't need to help us because we were already late. I thought it was staggering that the supervisor would try to stop a ticketing lady's attempt to get us home. It was indicative of what kind of help we were getting from her - NONE.

We rushed up to the gate, and saw the last person board flight #485, which we were supposed to be on. Of course, it was already packed and though our bags were on board, we weren't getting on. We sat down and waited for the #489 flight. It was unloaded late and people boarded late. By the time everyone was on board, there were 2 seats left and it was 7 minutes past the departure time of 5:33. The people at the boarding gate were about to show us the seats when the two guys who were traveling sauntered up to the gate and our seats were again not ours. I thought it interesting that NWA did everything it could to hold the door open for those two, even past the departure time, when we couldn't get a boarding pass 43 minutes before departure time.

We make our way back to the ticketing counter downstairs. Again Annette told us there was nothing she could do. When we told her about the incident at the boarding gate, she shrugged and said "But they were checked in." I asked her to check all flights to see if there were any airline that could fly us out. Prior to this she hadn't even tried before I insisted. Of course, nothing came up. "There is just nothing we can do for you." That is the line I have heard over and over and over again. Annette took a closer look at our tickets and found out that we couldn't stand-by for any flights the next day, contrary to what she and the other ticketing lady had said. "You will have to pay $150 a ticket to get on the flight tomorrow". I asked for a voucher for the unused portion of our ticket since by now I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere with the supervisor. She looked through our reservation again and said "I can't do that, your ticket was already printed." By this I think she meant the ticket that the counter lady printed so we could go up and standy-by for the 5:33pm flight. Though it was printed, it meant very little since we were not allowed on our original flight. It is not as if we could use it. I didn't understand her explanation but she refused to deal with us afterwards anyways.

My traveling companion and I realized NWA was not going to help us unless we paid for another ticket. We decided to try our luck with other airlines. Luckily, Spirit Airlines had a flight out to DTW at 7:40pm and we purchased tickets for $365 for the both of us. They were far more polite and friendly than Annette and the first ticketing lady we met at NWA counter.

We flew home without incident. At DTW we attempted to pick up our bags which flew on NWA flight 485. However over a hundred people were at the bag claim that night because their flight crew never showed up and they wanted to claim their bags for the night. We decided to go home and pick up the bags the following day.

Indeed, our bags arrived far before we had, and we claimed them on tuesday.