Northwest Airline Flight Attendant Strike Q&A
Aug 25th, 2006 | By Jared BlankNorthwest Airlines’ flight attendants have threatened sporadic strikes across their network beginning this evening. USA Today has put together a handy Q&A about the situation that could be helpful if you have plans to fly Northwest any time soon. (The short version is that flight attendants may randomly delay flights and there’s nothing you can do about it.)
Can anyone actually remember when a flight attendant group actually followed through with one of these random CHAOS disruptions? I think it did once happen, maybe in the early ’90s. Since then, I’ve seen a few dozen empty threats. Given that tough-guys NW would certainly fire anyone who engaged in CHAOS, I’d give 50 to 1 odds that it won’t be happening here either. The media should just ignore this posturing.
I agree that it probably won’t happen (which is why I haven’t mentioned the 50 articles written about it each day). But there’s a possibility (as when United’s pilots caused havoc a few summers ago).
Well, if CHAOS becomes a problem, I believe Maxwell Smart should be called in to help.
Yup, I can recall several instances in recent years (both publicized and not) where pilot slowdowns have bollixed up an airline’s operations. For a variety of logical reasons, flight attendants have simply not been able to achieve these results. I have a lot of sympathy for flight attendants (the job is a fair amount of hassle for the money), but the reality is that their bargaining position tends to be fairly weak.
Maxwell Smart can only help with KAOS, not CHAOS.