You’ve been hearing about Northwest Airlines quite a bit in the news lately. Just like all the other major airlines, they are on the brink of bankruptcy. I told you about my in-laws. I booked flights for them using my frequent flyer miles and somehow they got upgraded to first class. I pondered if this had to do with my ‘Northwest Airlines’ sucks blog post.

I’ve been thinking about this post and how it’s a great example of the Long Tail. I put that post out there a long time ago. Recently I’ve seen a bunch of traffic. I guess there must be a whole lot of people searching on the google keywords ‘Northwest Airlines Sucks’. My blog comes up third when you search that set of words. The post initially got hardly any attention. It was out there and once in a blue moon someone with another bummer of a story posted a comment. Well the last month or so has been much more active. I’m up to 69 responses as of now. I know that’s not a ton, but think about the fact that I put this blog out here, I told approximately 3 or 4 people it was here. Give it some time and the right topic and people gather, they comment, they share.

Now I have a confession to make. I took a Northwest Airlines flight today. I had to. Remember, hub city. I had to get from home to Vancouver, Canada, to San Fransisco and back home in a week’s time. If I went the Northwest way it meant a total of four flights. The next best routing with all other airlines (this was booked through my work travel agent, so there were plenty of choices…) was 7 flights. I kid you not. Well, this was a case in which Northwest was the clear winner. I was not about to take 7 flights (and spend way more money) to avoid Northwest. I simply had no choice. This is what happens when you live in a hub city. The strange thing about the flight today was that everyone working on the plane seemed pretty happy. I even overheard a conversation about vacation getting cut for flight attendants, still happy.

So even though plenty of people think it sucks. It seems like they aren’t the only ones that suck.