This post is from mommy since I slept the entire flight so I missed this entire episode.....Well, Jack's first experience on Northwest got us to our final destination on time (actually a little early?!) both ways, but they did show some remarkable stupidity!
On our flight from Traverse City to Detroit this morning we had been sitting on the runway for about 15 minutes after leaving the terminal. This was a little odd since it is a small airport with no waits for runways, but it is Northwest, so I wasn't shocked. I looked up briefly as the flight attendant walked by and it seemed she was counting the passengers again, as she had done 15 minutes before as we pulled away from the terminal. I thought she only counted me (I was sitting next to Jack), but wasn't really paying attention and didn't know what/why she was counting so let it be as I didn't want to mess up her count. On her way back to the front of the plane I overheard someone up ahead ask what the delay was about. She said they couldn't reconcile the count at the gate with the people on the plane. About 1 minute later she counts again and when she gets to us I pay attention and she clearly doesn't count Jack. This time I stopped her and told her we paid for his seat.
Note to those not used to traveling with babies: You can carry kids under 2 on your lap for free. If there is an empty seat on the plane they may let you use it for your child if you have a car seat with you. OR you can buy a seat for the child, which is what we did. A look of horror: "Uh...Oh, that's it." Without saying thank you or apologizing to anyone, she stops her count goes back up front and picks up the phone. Apparently she just assumed (even AFTER 15 minutes of trying to figure out a passenger count) that he was let on for free.
One would think we would take off almost immediately now that they realized their error in not counting the baby. However it took about another 5 minutes for the "computer" to be ready. Anyway, in the end we were only about 10 minutes late in to Detroit but there were some people running to connections because of this.
Dumb, just Dumb.
