This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by psa188@juno.com. Northwest Looks to New Terminal to Improve Its Image February 20, 2002 By JOE SHARKEY DETROIT -- Executives at Northwest Airlines (news/quote) would very much appreciate it if we all would forget a horror show that many business travelers still associate with its brand. It occurred on Jan. 3, 1999, with 14 inches of gusting snow hammering flight operations at the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, an antiquated facility unable to handle the onslaught of planes that Northwest insisted on continuing to land. The result was a huge ice-bound tarmac traffic jam, with 4,500 passengers confined for up to nine hours - "imprisoned" was the term used in a passenger lawsuit that Northwest later settled for $7.15 million - on 30 airplanes unable to get to gates. Tempers flared, toilets overflowed and information was maddeningly unavailable. Now Northwest, the nation's fourth-largest airline, would like to direct your attention to a new $1.2 billion terminal that it will open Sunday at Detroit Metro. Though there are concerns about reports of some glitches that may not yet be worked out in the new high-technology baggage-handling system, Northwest is opening the terminal on schedule and banking its image on it. "We want somebody to prefer going through Detroit on a connecting flight," said Jim Greenwald, the airline's vice president for facilities, who supervised the design and construction of the terminal. "We think that if you give the best service, if your facility is comfortable and satisfies their priorities, they will come," he said. "That's the motivation that drives Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons to do certain things in the way they design a hotel. And that's an interesting motivation to drive you to build a new terminal." Airports traditionally have been designed more like military depots than swank hotels, but this is changing as new terminals open. Mr. Greenwald's professional experience bridges both poles. He spent an earlier career as a Seabee, a combat engineer in the United States Navy. But before joining Northwest, he supervised hotel construction for Marriott during a five-year period in which the company built 258 hotels. Northwest believes that the airline's brand identity suffered because of widespread disdain for the cramped Detroit Metro airport, a jumble of interconnected, added-on concourses and constricted tarmacs and taxiways that resembles an amateur home-remodeling enthusiast's 30-year plan run amok. During the 1999 blizzard, ice and snow combined with Metro's constricted tarmacs, inadequate gates and jury-rigged concourse layouts to produce total gridlock. Aircraft could not maneuver, even to vacate a gate to unload another plane. The airport in general, Northwest felt, has acted as a drag on its image even after the airline itself established a new reputation for good on-time performance and innovative business- fare pricing. "A hit on your brand is a hit on your brand," Mr. Greenwald said of the 1999 fiasco. With its hub relocated to the new two-million-square-foot terminal from the old Detroit terminals - which will continue in operation - Northwest hopes the airport will compete much more aggressively with O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, a hub for rivals like United Airlines. At the new terminal, domestic and international gates are in the same building, an arrangement that eases international connections and positions Northwest to win more of the growing market for business travel to China and the rest of Asia - an easy shot from Detroit on the northern-circle route. Northwest will dominate the new terminal, which also will house operations for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (news/quote) and several other carriers. It is designed to be able to process eight long-haul 747's simultaneously, as opposed to "maybe two right now," Mr. Greenwald said. "Asia is a very large part of the potential of the facility," he added. To help lure more connecting passengers away from other hubs in the Midwest, the terminal has 80 shops and restaurants and 200 places to get boarding passes or check luggage. It also has 4 Northwest WorldClub membership lounges, 21 security checkpoints to minimize lines, and an 11,500-space adjoining parking garage with its own e-ticket check-in and baggage check counters. An adjoining $80 million Westin Hotel is under construction and is scheduled to open late this year. As opening day loomed on a recent morning, Mr. Greenwald gave a tour of the new digs, accompanied by one of his project sidekicks, Kathleen Nelson, the director of finance who managed the construction budget and the contractual relationships with Wayne County, which leases the building to the airline. Mr. Greenwald said he was pleased at the way the terminal melds the militarylike logistics of loading and dispatching airplanes with aesthetic concerns like providing open spaces and interesting sightlines. Among his design models were Camden Yard, the acclaimed ballpark in Baltimore, and the classic, high-ceilinged train terminals of the early 20th century. One people-moving innovation is the passenger tram, with fire-engine- red train cars, that runs in the open on a mezzanine along a nearly mile- long length of the main concourse. "We wanted to avoid putting it in a tunnel," Mr. Greenwald said. "It's supposed to look like the one you had around your Christmas tree when you were a little kid." As a forklift skittered past our small tour party amid the clanging frenzy of construction being hounded by a ticking clock, Mr. Greenwald paused by his favorite accessory, a huge round black-granite fountain at the center of the concourse. Concealed spigots spritz sorties of tube- shaped flights of water on precise routes across a convex surface that suggests the outlines of the northern hemisphere. "Its nice to have a calm, civil moment to show the place off," he allowed. Ms. Nelson, rolling her eyes, said: "Well, he's nice and calm right now, but the next minute it'll be, `What do you think you're doing! Get that thing moving!' " "Well, it all has to work, right?" he was asked. "You got it," replied Mr. Greenwald, an old Seabee tugging at his construction helmet and moving on. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/20/business/20TRAV.html?ex=1015230200&ei=1&en=1a010a4ab22e2718 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company