For the past half hour, I have been sitting in seat 39A staring at Gate F8, which we were supposed to depart from an hour ago. This is not the first time that I encountered a flight problem. On my way to Alaska last week, my second of three planes held us over in Minnesota for three hours due to “maintenance problems”. This time – there was a problem with the plane’s radar – so they had to take a piece from another aircraft and install it on the one I was taking today.

If that was not annoying enough, they then had to remove some of the fuel on the plane because it was originally bound for Anchorage and had too much fuel to make the legal landing weight limit at Newark International Airport.

While both delays were a week apart and were caused by entirely different problems – they have two things in common. Both delays screwed up my plans and made me late to my destination – and both problems occurred on the same airline – Northwest.

With the exception of this month, I am not a frequent flyer, but to encounter two separate problems on two separate aircrafts from the same company only a week apart is to me – a little suspicious of the quality of this company’s aircraft – and its not like they were simple problems either. The first one was a problem with the landing gear that cost me three hours travel time and made e miss my connecting flight in Anchorage, changing both my arrival in Juneau and the start of my vacation from 6:40pm Alaska time to 10:00pm Alaska time.

Now, due to this “radar” problem, I won’t land in Newark until 2:00am New York time – and then still have to take a cab home from New Jersey, through Staten Island and then through Brooklyn. Worse then that – I have to wait even longer to see Christine – thanks a lot Northwest Airlines.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that a plane that is not one hundred percent operational should be flying just so I can get where I want to go when I want to get there. All I am suggesting is that perhaps Northwest should seriously consider purchasing some newer aircraft – because if I experienced two problems in just one week – how many other problems has Northwest had?

One thing is for sure, the next time I fly anywhere – whenever and wherever that is – I won’t fly Northwest.