$2 Pringles Are the Least of Northwest Airline’s Worries

I blogged recently about a strange little incident with Northwest Airlines and a can of Pringles. Your comments indicated that Northwest has been plagued by rocky service. (Your comments also indicated that I’m a [expletive deleted] whiner, but I would argue that such comments missed the point of the post.) As Joe Sharkey reports in today’s New York Times, Northwest canceled about 13% of its scheduled flights this past weekend, with the cancellations continuing yesterday. Why? Sharkey writes that Joe Brancatelli, who runs the business travel website JoeSentMe.com, got hold of an internal Northwest memo that blamed the cancellations on “crew scheduling shortages.” Does this mean that Northwest staff is so disgruntled with their jobs that they’re playing the rolling-sickout game?