Northwest Airlines/KLM
Customer Services Department
MS C65917500 Airline Drive
Minneapolis, MN 55450-1101

Dear Northwest Customer Service,

My wife and I are both long-time Northwest worldperks members; against our better judgment we have continued to fly your fleet of rickety Airbuses and 757s long after you stopped serving free peanuts and tore out all the video screens on your transcontinental flights. I know we have our pick of bankrupt airlines, but for some reason we always keep coming back to you. You've never delayed us like Delta and you fly direct from SFO to Detroit. For that I'll tolerate planes that still have ashtrays in the armrests and the scab mechanics you use to clean dead birds out of the jet engines.

We have come to love direct flights since the birth of our daughter. She's nine months old and we have now made thirteen flights with her. We consider ourselves relatively experienced at traveling with an infant, and have even developed a set of rules we follow and that we have even recommended to others. One of these rules is to always book the aisle and window seats in the last row of the plane to increase our odds of getting a free middle seat for our baby. Unless the flight is full, it always works.

I am writing to tell you today about our experience last Sunday on NW Flight 0345. When we arrived at the gate, the agent there told us they had been trying to contact us over the loudspeaker. We were surprised when she told us that a full row had opened up towards the front of the aircraft and that they wanted to move us there. We thanked her, but declined. See, we prefer the last row, because if the baby starts screaming, we only disturb the people in front of us. We tried to explain this to the gate agent, and she stared at us blankly, as if we were trying to note the application of Pascal's binomial theorem to the battle of Waterloo.

Once we were on the plane, no fewer than four flight attendants offered to find us seats closer to the front of the plane, which we further declined. We watched them plotting seat maps like John Madden, looking to move entire rows in the back closer to the front. A few of the passengers complied, because the attendants acted as though they were doing them a favor.

Eventually, a surly young homosexual Spanish flight attendant who bore a striking resemblance to a 21 Jump Street-era Lou Diamond Phillips came up to us and tapped his feet. The following is a fully accurate transcription of our interaction:

Lou: Um, Hi. We have just emptied out Row 37 a-c for you guys, so if you would like to move up there you can.

Me: No, it's okay, really. We prefer the last row.

Lou: You prefer the last row?

Me: Yeah, actually we do. The baby doesn't disturb anyone behind us back here and if her toys fall on the floor they're not rolling all over the place.

Lou: Oh. So you're not going to move?

Me: No, sorry.

Lou: Well, thank you for being so cooperative.

Look, we're totally cool with the gay thing. We're comfortable with that three-snaps of the fingers sass that gay dudes like to pull from time to time, especially when done well with just the right amount of femme and a Spanish accent. Let's just say that your flight attendant, Lou Diamond Phillips, didn't pull it off very well. It was bare rudeness without the aplomb. It was half-assed, with the subtlety of a slap in the face. I know you guys are struggling and laying off flight attendants, but you might still consider offering them a seminar in how to be rude without seeming like you're being rude. After saying this, Lou went back to the flight attendant station, a mere three feet from our ears and proceeded to announce to his fag hags with as much vitriol as he could muster what horrid fucking breeders we were for not giving up that seat. "They won't move?" Fag Hag #1 said. "No," Lou replied. "They want to sit there for their fucking baby or something. . ."

At this point, my wife was physically restraining me from getting up and dropping la bamba on his ass. She was right to do so; flight attendants seem to have a certain authority vested in them like mall security guards or bus drivers. You don't want to piss them off until you're practically out the door, screaming obscenities over your shoulder, or else they're likely to throw you into the cargo hold with the golden retrievers in cages. Ultimately, we learned why they wanted us to move. Apparently, they were planning to throw a party back there and we weren't invited. Two gay stewards from first class brought back an apronful of those little smurf bottles of liquor and some leftover first class meals and the entire cabin crew proceeded to get wasted on thimble-sized shots of Dewar's while they ate stinky chicken parm and grew ever more catty perusing the shared pages of a single issue of Us Weekly. When a Chinese guy got up to ask for some water for his bootleg Nalgene bottle, one of the fag hags barked, "What are you doing out of your seat?" Things got rowdier and rowdier as the 4.5 hour flight went on. Turns out they didn't need to sit in the back rows of seats. They just didn't want any passengers back there to find out what they were doing. They wanted us to give up the seats we paid for so they could have a party buffer.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Sincerely,

Sweet Juniper's Parents

p.s. thanks for losing my bag.

*Update*

Northwest to cut flight attendants' pay