Northern 777 Poster 2010 -

As things were looking up for Northern. January 2nd 2010 Northern unveiled their latest rebrand to the public to much fanfare as the continued to progress their brand. The first plane to wear the livery was a 777-200LR N919NO that had just been delivered to the airline. The plane was displayed outside of the airlines hangar in Chicago allowing journalists and high status passengers view the new interior for the first time before the plane was brought to a gate for its first international flight for the airline. Two months later this aircraft would be involved in an incident at San Francisco where as the aircraft was being pushed back it struck the tail of another 777 causing both flights to be cancelled.

In 2011 a system bug caused two hundred and fifty flights in Northerns domestic system to be delayed or cancelled. Weeks later it would be revealed that Northerns system had been hacked and brought down. And although Northerns attempts to stop this problem a later bug would lead to passenger information to be leaked including passenger manifests and other sensitive information leading to another three hundred domestic flights being grounded indefinitely although the bugs had been worked out this significantly damaged the airlines on time reputation.

In late 2011 Northern was once again under-fire from the press after a whistleblower revealed that Northern Cargo had been misreporting mail manifests to the USPS causing them to lose their coveted U.S. Mail Contract that they had been running for over 80 years along with an undisclosed fine. After this Northern Holdings decided to fire the current CEO and majority of the executive staff claiming that problems like this would not continue into the future. The new CEO would be Michal Herrin, the former COO of Intercontinental.

The start of 2012 looked bright for Northern as passenger numbers were steadily rising. A large new ad campaign along with a new Inflight Entertainment system being installed in planes system wide boasting a wide selection of T.V. Shows, movies and live news and sports games on all flights. Northern would also move to improve legroom on all of their planes by removing rows in economy. 2012 also saw a large aircraft order from Northern who opted to order one hundred new 737 Max 8 and 9 aircraft along with orders for the 787-9 and 10 aircraft.

In 2013 at the start of the busy Thanksgiving season Northern’s flight attendants went on strike claiming that they were being underappreciated by the airline's executives. Flight attendants went on strike in front of the airlines Headquarters in the Sears Tower and in front of Terminal one at Chicago. 95% of Northern Airlines flight crew stepped out of their jobs and caused the airline to ground the majority of their fleet on thanksgiving day. The Airline worked hard to get their flight crews back into the air offering the flight attendants a raise and a promise to renovate staff areas across their crew bases. It was estimated during the week-long strike the airline lost close to $11 million a day.

In 2015 Northern painted one of their 747-400’s (Queen of Chicago III) in a livery depicting the Chicago skyline with text reading “Proudly Chicagoan” across the side.

In late 2015 Northern Group announced plans to purchase American Aircraft Leasing and GrateServ, a catering company. Both deals going through and the two companies coming under Northern Groups umbrella expanding them out of just travel and logistics.

2016 saw another acquisition by Northern Group purchasing American Technical, an aircraft maintenance provider that was used by many airlines. The name was then changed to Northern Technical Services and expanded to all of their major hub cities.

In 2017 Northern placed an order for the Boeing 787-9 and -10 series of aircraft as an intended replacement for their A330 fleet. The aircraft were slated for retirement in 2025 although this was pushed back as their 787 order was delayed by Boeing.

2018 saw the airlines attempt to take over regional carrier Condor Connect unsuccessfully with the fledgeling regional contractor eventually being sold to American Midwest Air. This would also mark the Northern Airlink contract out of O’hare being given to American Midwest to operate Ejets in their midwest network.

Sorry this took too long to upload! And sorry for the lore it will be completed with the upcoming posts .