My longtime friend Joe Brancatelli runs an excellent website about travel, aiming primarily at the airlines and all that they do wrong. It costs a few bucks to access Joe's site but it yields much valuable info, plus you get e-mailed updates. I just received one that Joe said I could share with you here…
I've just posted several new items at JoeSentMe.com about the first day of the Northwest Airlines mechanics strike. The bottom line: Of 99 flights I tracked at random on Saturday, Northwest racked up a miserable 46.5 percent on-time rating. And this was Saturday, the light day. By Sunday evening and Monday morning, when business travelers have to get back on the road, things will probably be worse.
Bottom line: Despite what you may be hearing in the general media, which merely repeats Northwest management assertions without actually checking the stats Northwest itself is publishing on its flight tracker, this bears all the hallmarks of a 2000-style United Airlines meltdown.
Joe is updating the stats on his site. I would tend to believe him before I'd believe the press coverage that quotes airline execs as saying all is well.