An off-duty Northwest Airlines employee was accused of sexual assault after a woman said that he sat next to her on an overnight flight, lifted up her shirt and touched himself.  And not in a good way.  The employee was taken into FBI custody after the flight landed, and he’s been suspended from his job.

FOLLOW UP: Apparently the employee not only touched himself, he, uh, finished himself off on the woman he was sitting next to.  When Northwest reports higher load factors next month, this is NOT what they’re talking about (allow me to apologize for that in advance)…

JetBlue’s nightmare week is continuing, as the airline has announced it will cancel 25% of its Monday flights, 5 days after an East Coast storm wiped out its operations.  JetBlue has cancelled about 1,000 flights in 5 days, and has seen 7 years of goodwill flushed down the 2 lavatories located in coach.  Police were called in to calm frustrated travelers in Boston and New York.  Incredible that the situation got so out of hand in multiple cities, but the comments a couple of OTR readers have posted about their own horror stories suggests that it was amazing customers kept it together at all.

Also incredibly, CEO David Neeleman told the NY Times that airline management was unprepared for the way the events unfolded.  He blamed airline operations for not being able to stay in touch with pilots & flight attendants, blamed customer service reps who work out of their homes, blamed the airline’s reservations system, and blamed the airline’s emergency control center.  Though while he said he was "humiliated and mortified," he didn’t take the blame himself.  And from what it sounds like, the airline was simply ill-prepared and, worse, took several days to realize the extent that it was unprepared.  If Neeleman weren’t the founder, I would expect a board to oust him over this.  But they won’t. 

I was about to write that on the plus side, we can assume this will never happen again.  But it’s happened over and over again (from the Northwest 20+ hour ordeal several years ago, to the American mess in Texas last year, to JetBlue).  It will happen again.  Profits come first, you come second.  It’s great when that benefits passengers, but it stings a bit when it doesn’t.  As soon as we stop fooling ourselves that airlines care about anything other than profitability (and, to be fair, safety), we’ll gladly accept the next 3-hour wait on the tarmac. 

US Airways’ CEO said yesterday that they have made their final offer for Delta and that if Delta’s board doesn’t want to approve it, the offer will expire February 1.  He also dismissed speculation that US Airways would up the bid by $1 billion.  So, with Delta off the table, is Northwest next?  If Delta and Northwest made sense, and Delta and US Airways made sense, wouldn’t US Airways and Northwest make sense (as much as any of these ridiculous rumors make sense)?  When we will start hearing those rumors?

(UPDATE: IT’S FINISHED.)  US Airways frequent flyers who were dreaming of using their miles to fly to Kiev or Dakar should shelve those dreams and book their free flights to Elmira or Franklin-Oil City or wherever US Airways flies.

The WSJ (subscription required, sorry) has a good article today that finds several airlines will not re-book  travelers stranded by a storm in open seats, preferring to hold them back for sale.  Yes, you read that correctly.  United, Delta and Northwest all say that they will fly with empty first class seats even when travelers have been stranded because of a storm, preferring to sell those seats if possible.  Now, I appreciate wanting to sell every seat on an airplane.  But if you’ve cancelled flights because of weather, and people have been inconvenienced by that cancellation, what kind of evil company would tell that person to continue to camp out in an airport when seats are flying empty.  Yet another reason why people hate airlines.

The WSJ is reporting that Delta has been in talks with Northwest Airlines about a potential merger.  Odd that Delta had been swearing that they wanted to remain independent while at the same time talking to Northwest.  I’d be interested if anyone can explain why they’d be interested in Northwest (still in bankruptcy) and not in US Airways (profitable).  Thoughts?

It’s the time of year when all news outlets do Top 10 lists of this or that, so, because I have no original ideas whatsoever, I’m bringing you the 10 Craziest Airline Stories of 2006.  Enjoy.

10) A Lithuanian tourist in Cancun runs out of money and heads to the airport to strip for cash so she can buy a ticket home.

9) Baggage screeners at Fort Lauderdale find human head in luggage.  Owner claims it’s used for voodoo.

8) Another year of celebrities getting kicked off planes.  While Snoop Dogg, DMX and Mo’Nique all had run-ins, I believe David Hasselhoff’s drinking binge prior to boarding a British Airways flight takes the prize.  Said a witness, "he had trouble standing."

7) Northwest Airlines killed 9,000 1-day-old turkeys it was transporting from Detroit to San Francisco.  This isn’t funny, but killing 9,000 turkeys on one flight is impressive, isn’t it?

6) China Southern tells passengers to pee before they fly to save money.

5) Northwest Airlines publishes pamphlet telling laid off workers they "shouldn’t be shy about pulling something they like out of the trash" to save money.

4) Angry passenger bites ear off of Alitalia employee after being told his flight was overbooked.

3) Turkish mechanic is fired after sacrificing camel at Istanbul’s airport as part of a celebration for completing some work.

2) A woman’s flatulence causes a flight to make unscheduled landing.

1) Passenger carrying penis pump in bag at O’Hare is too embarassed to tell security that it’s a penis pump.  So he tells them it’s a bomb.

Have a merry Christmas.

For geeky (in a good way) airplane people, there’s some good news:  Seven of Northwest’s ancient DC-10s, which many (?) thought were headed for the Arizona desert, will be sold to ATA, which must’ve bought the old birds for next to nothing.  Good for them. 

We’re nearing the end of a (very long) era at Northwest Airlines, as the carrier announced that it flew its last ancient DC-10 to Europe on Sunday, replacing the aging widebody with new A330s.  Northwest will continue to use DC-10s on its Minneapolis to Honolulu route through January (yes, the movie is projected on a screen at the front of the cabin.  Just like in 1974.)  Someone out there can correct me, but I believe they are the last US airline to fly DC-10s, and, until now, flew the oldest fleet in the US.  The A330s, though, are quite nice, with (angled) lie-flat seats and video on demand.

Delta and Northwest have both announced major international expansion plans yesterday, with Delta, especially, continuing to shift its strategy toward higher yield, lower competition routes.

Delta will begin service next summer from Atlanta to Prague, Vienna, Seoul and Dubai, while they’ll begin service from JFK to Pisa and Bucharest around the same time.  Delta briefly (very briefly) served Dubai just before 9/11.  The carrier hopes to achieve 40% of its revenue from its international operations.  They’re trying a very different approach for a US airline, for the most part avoiding competition and opening new routes where they can command a premium.  Assuming they can get their costs in line, monopoly routes + lie flat beds could mean success for them.  Finally.

Northwest, meanwhile, is introducing new service to Brussels and Dusseldorf from their Detroit hub, as well as nonstop service from Hartford (????) to Amsterdam.  Northwest has had meagre service to Europe compared to its other SkyTeam partners, so this should make people in the midwest quite happy.  Even better, they’re adding about 4 inches of legroom in coach.  Things are finally getting better in the back of the plane.

You may have been wondering whether airlines were able to handle the additional checked bags that were a result of the new security rules put in place in August.  (or you may not have been wondering, I don’t know).  Either way, it turns out that the airlines couldn’t handle the increase very well.  August saw a more than 20% jump in lost bags, from 6.5 per 1,000 checked bags in July, to 8.08 in August.  JetBlue and Northwest had the best record, while US Airways had the worst, with 10.33 bags lost per 1,000 (yes, that means they lost 1% of all bags checked, a pathetic record).