In our celebration of 75 years since NWA began the first commercial flights using the Great Circle route across the North Pacific to connect East Asia with North America, we’ll be posting several features from the NWAHC archive in July. First up is a scan from the July 2007 NWA WorldTraveler magazine with interviews and history clips of the-then sixty years of service to Asia.
Joe Mazan and his cameraman paid our Museum location a visit on Thursday, March 31 to interview Bruce Kitt and gather footage of our exhibits for the station’s “So Minnesota” weekly series. They edited the segment and it broadcast on Monday, April 18.
The segment is available through the link: https://kstp.com/special-coverage/so-minnesota/so-minnesota-northwest-airlines-history-center/
Since the airing, we’ve been getting comments every day, and visits to the museum are up noticeably!
There was a time, long before Deregulation, when Herman and the NWA logo flew together in harmony. One of these moments is immortalized here in a hallway at the Duluth airport on February 10, 1952 – Northwest had long since ceased its seaplane connection from Duluth Harbor to Minneapolis and it wasn’t until this point when nonstop flights finally started to allow connections at MSP.
There were frequent passenger train routings between the Twin Ports and Twin Cities at the time, so the appeal of a flight was to allow for faster access to points beyond. Hence, WIS advertised the coast-to-coast reach of Northwest. By Fall 1952, WIS would be operating three DC-3 roundtrips daily on the route, with a flying time of one hour.
As American, United, Eastern, USAir, and Delta started drawing down their point-to-point networks in the mid-1980s to instead amplify their respective hubs, longer-range domestic opportunities out of Detroit opened for Republic and Northwest – such as nonstops to Los Angeles and San Francisco, and more service to Florida. This worked in reverse as well – Republic’s drawdown from Chicago sent regional traffic into DTW so that a passenger from Traverse City or Green Bay could stay on RC metal for an entire trip instead of having to interline. Commuter services were added mid-decade through Republic Express (operated by Simmons) and Northwest Airlink (operated by Fischer Bros. Aviation) to the rapidly-expanding dual hub.
Predictably, to those who served or flew through DTW’s 1980s Berry, Davey, and Smith terminals, the extra business overwhelmed its stubby concourses. Too-narrow hallways built for origin-destination traffic were clogged by transfer passengers, too-few shopping and dining options left customers frustrated, and lack of gate and ramp space led to ground congestion and flight delays.
The 1986 Republic-Northwest merger allowed for some smoothing out of operations to better balance loads and eliminating redundant commuter flights, but this could not solve the fundamental airport layout problems and would impede NWA’s ambition to build an intercontinental connecting hub with its new Boeing 747-400 fleet. Clearly, a new terminal was necessary.
It took ten years to complete the planning and permitting to finally kick off in 1996 the building of what was at that time called the Midfield Terminal. New runways and ramps, access roads and interchanges would be constructed over the next five years while the ground was leveled, foundations laid, and framework slowly assembled for a mile-long, two concourse complex.
Delays in airport construction are unsurprising, and the planned Fall 2001 opening window also had the misfortune to coincide with the September 11 tragedy. Thankfully the terminal was able to smoothly adapt to new security processes and the usual systems testing went smoothly. The Edward H. McNamara Terminal – Northwest’s WorldGateway – opened to customers February 24, 2002 to high praise and much relief.
While the B/C gates would not be fully built out for several more years, the entire NWA operation including Airlink services was easily accommodated in the new complex. The integration of international ‘flex’ gates with domestic operations gave Northwest a clear, sustained advantage for passengers connecting to or from overseas flights – in contrast to the (still!) frustrating separate-terminal arrangement at Chicago O’Hare.
Twin-jetbridge loading and ample ramp space made widebody jet operations efficient and allowed for new aircraft with broader wingspans to dock should the need arise. The gate layout also considered NWA’s important cargo operations for easy container staging and movement. Today’s Airbus A350-900s are comfortably serviced thanks to decisions made in the mid-1990s.
The ample gaterooms and wide hallway with moving walkways along the spine of the A concourse, and distributed food and shopping options at the ends and center of the spine, helped with crowd management. And to keep short connecting times possible, the speedy upper-level Express Tram railway tied the whole concourse together. Overnight, the impression of Northwest’s connecting operation went from a cramped bus terminal to a roomy space station!
With plenty of space to sit, several play rooms for kids, the fascinating choreography of the fountain and light show sequence in the B/C access tunnel, flying through Detroit became something to look forward to – and helped Northwest attract more traffic as the world recovered after 9/11.
The WorldGateway allowed the DTW hub to bloom with new service and connections, becoming the leading gateway to Asia from the eastern USA, and an important trans-Atlantic gateway from the central states – five-per-day frequencies to Amsterdam were common even in the mid-2000s.
DTW’s efficiency, flexibility, and high capacity made it an important asset in the Northwest-Delta merger and allowed DL to draw down its historic but multiple-terminal Cincinnati hub. As we celebrate 20 years of operations, we also celebrate the design choices NWA drove that will make this terminal well-used and well-appreciated for many decades to come.
The newest exhibit at our museum – dedicated to the evolution of cabin seating – is starting to take shape! We’ve had the World Business Class seats professionally moved from our Eden Prairie archive over to Bloomington, lifted up to the third floor and through the fire doors. We also moved over original wicker chairs from the Ford Tri-Motor that we’ve had in storage. Our Finance Director, Jeff Schwalen, constructed plywood boxes to set our seats upon, and several volunteers came in last month to rearrange display cases and our famous gong to make room.
Above each seat pair we are also hanging a model of the corresponding aircraft in the colors it was flying while these seats were in use.
Professional museum exhibit designers are being contacted to request quotes for a fully-realized backdrop with signage, flooring, and lighting, but while that process plays out you can see our volunteer-led, week-by-week tweaks and enhancements to the display.
With the great success of 2021’s event, the enthusiastic participation of the Best Western Plus, and the hope that COVID will have been beaten, the NWAHC has reserved ballroom space for Saturday, October 8th.
We’re working to add extra features to this year’s show, so check our announcements over the summer to see what surprises are in store. Looking forward to hosting you again!
It is a pleasure to draw upon the NWAHC’s holdings and airline know-how to assist researchers and authors, and for about two years we’ve had the honor of corresponding with Bob Edwards, a British economist, researcher, private pilot, and writer currently in Romania, on his new book, “D.B. Cooper and Flight 305,” releasing this week.
Edwards’ approach to the well-trod ground of the unsolved case is not to look at Cooper the persona, but rather is to crunch the numbers of the 727’s flight path and physics of the jumper and parachute, using FBI and Northwest source documents and interviews, with follow-up interviews with parachuting and airframe experts.
Dr. Edwards sat for a podcast recording on the “Cooper Vortex” this month for an hour, and name-checked the NWAHC in the interview. You can listen to this recording at https://thecoopervortex.podbean.com/e/db-cooper-and-flight-305-dr-robert-edwards/
We wish Bob success with his book and look forward to adding it to our library!
Our Fall 2012 issue featured key points from a discussion with Bill Rataczak, the co-pilot on Flight 305, during a “Coffee & Conversation” event at the NWAHC’s original museum site, as well as photos of the get-together. Follow this link to read the full issue – there’s also a great article about Northwest’s relationship with the advertising agency Campbell-Mithun:
https://northwestairlineshistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/1209-newsletter.pdf
The mystery around the unsolved November 1971 hijacking continues to hold the public’s imagination, even 50 years after the event. While the notoriety does result in crackpot phone calls to our museum every so often, we do have to admit it keeps the Northwest name in active memory…
NWA’s magazine of the 1970s, Passages, was published every other month in the early part of the decade. So for sure the November-December issue would have been in Cooper’s seat pocket. Unlikely but one never knows if the September-October issue was also floating around the cabin. We present both issues in full here for your browsing pleasure.
Note the choice of advertising on the back cover of the November-December issue… Hertz Rent-a-Car featuring … Disney characters? And Disney would go on to purchase Marvel? Whose hit show, “Loki,” would portray the D.B. Cooper hijacking in its first episode, streaming on Disney+? What a delicious coincidence!
This copy of the 1969 brochure introducing North Central’s new headquarters and primary maintenance base (today’s Building D at Delta’s Minneapolis/St. Paul complex) comes from Hal Carr’s personal collection. The complex was a beautifully realized Mid-Century Modern design that has held up quite well in the five decades since it was completed, as the many photos inside this brochure will demonstrate.
Its positioning alongside busy Interstate 494 then and now was a master stroke of marketing that Republic, Northwest, and Delta continued to take advantage of – both to burnish name recognition, as well as to show off their fleets. North Central’s management could never have anticipated that their investment would be the visual focal point of essentially the Twin Cities’ third “downtown”.
From the donated papers of Hal Carr, we find a copy of the full-color brochure sent to all Southern and North Central employees to introduce Republic Airlines:
Staff photos taken for the piece are the main attraction for today’s readers. Perhaps you or someone you know appears here?
Departing from the Airliners International conference in July 2021, we had given ourselves plenty of time to explore Phoenix International Airport’s pair of landside terminals and the excellent photography options made available by the airport’s elevated inter-terminal tram system. While food and shopping options pre-security were still severely limited due to combination of COVID spacing concerns and the overall labor shortage, the airport’s commitment to displaying art nevertheless made for a visually interesting expedition, and one that we will be keen to repeat when the pandemic is finally under control.
Below are a collection of Phoenix Airport Museum flyers and photos from several exhibits, with the “Style in the Aisle” installation of special interest to the Northwest Family of course due to the colorful display of uniforms, bags, and service materials from Bonanza, Air West, and Hughes Airwest.
