Originally Posted by NuGuy

Heyas RVR,


Your impressions are pretty accurate. I commuted to FLL from MSP for about a year, and it was a hassle.

NWA was always a very seasonal airline, and the pull back to FL and other points in the south in the summertime always made commuting a chore, even from DTW. MSP really was the center of the universe, and I have had MSP based FAs say "why would anyone want to live in Florida?".

The seasonality abated somewhat in the last few years in DTW, but commuting from MSP to the east (other than the NYC area or DC, perhaps) can still be a chore. You might see a BIT more "commuting is a choice" thing in MSP, but nothing like ATL. Most MSP commuters are to points west or south down the Central time zone.

The DC-9 trips have always been less commutable than other fleets just because the duty days are so darn long. The lack of variety, however, is a result in the pullback of the fleet. Back in the day when there were 180+ DC-9s, which was not all that log ago, you went just about everywhere other than the west coast, and you went into a lot of small, wacky places that had no other mainline service by anyone.

DC-9 flying out of MSP, especially, took you into places like Omaha, Green Bay, Des Moines, several towns in Montana (Kalispel, Missoula, Great Falls, Helena), several more places in the Dakotas (FSD, RAP, FAR, GFK, BIS, MOT and even more places in western Canada like Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Regina. Out of DTW, you hit just about every burg with a stop light.

Now that the fleet is smaller, that limits where you go.

Nu