by Dave Weiman
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. – Growing up in the Twin Cities, everyone in the community looked up to Northwest Airlines because it was based at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) and this gave us a sense of pride and distinction. Northwest was also a major employer, and flying for the company was a goal of many student pilots who learned to fly at the six reliever airports in the metropolitan area.
I took my first flight ever with Northwest Airlines and remember the experience well.
It was the late 1960s and my older brother got married in Racine, Wisconsin. Instead of giving him a wedding gift, he and his bride gave me one – a one-way ticket from Chicago O’Hare to Minneapolis.
It was in the winter, and it was dark when we departed, so seeing the lights of the big city and smaller towns along the way, really intrigued me. The flight may have been short, but we were served a full dinner.
Three years later while working on my Private Pilot Certificate, I remember flying over MSP during the Northwest Airlines strike of 1972 and looking down at all of the red-tailed 727s parked anywhere and everywhere. I thought it was the worst day in aviation history until the week following 9-11.
Nothing has brought back those memories more than the book “Non-Stop: A Turbulent History of Northwest Airlines.”
From its earliest flights in 1926, carrying mail and occasionally a solo passenger to Chicago, to its acquisition by Delta in 2010, Northwest Airlines soared to the heights of technological achievement and business innovation, and sunk to the depths of employee discord, passenger dissatisfaction, and financial bankruptcy.
The airline’s story, rich in singular successes and failures, also has the sweep of the history of American business in the twentieth century.
“Non-Stop: A Turbulent History of Northwest Airlines” captures both the broad context and the intriguing details as it weaves together the accounts of individuals who gave the airline its unique character: from founder Lewis Brittin and pioneering female executive “Rosie” Stein to the CEOs who saw the company through its glory days and its final tumultuous decade.
What was it like to pilot a crippled airliner, to be in the vanguard of the new profession of the flight stewardess, to ride in the cabin of a luxurious Stratocruiser for the first time? These are the experiences that come alive as Jack El-Hai follows Northwest from its humble beginnings to its triumph as the envy of the airline industry and then ultimately to its decline into what aggrieved passengers and employees called “Northworst.”
Non-Stop hits the airline’s high points, such as its contributions during World War II and the Korean War, and its lows, such as when D.B. Cooper hijacked a Northwest Boeing 727 on November 24, 1971, extorted $200,000 in ransom, then parachuted from the plane between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, never to be seen again; and when a terrorist disrupted the airline in its last year.
Touching on everything from airline food and advertising to smoking regulations and labor relations, the story of Northwest Airlines encapsulates the profound changes to business, travel and culture that marked the twentieth century.
Non-Stop: A Turbulent History of Northwest Airlines is 328 pages in length with lots of interesting photos. It is cloth-bound and available for $39.95 through the University of Minnesota Press at fine bookstores or by calling 1-800-621-2736 (ISBN: 978-0-8166-7445-9). http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/non-stop.
