Northwest Airlines was my airline of choice for many years. It was the airline my company put me on when we were considering moving from New York to Oregon. Over the years I had flown about 700,000 miles on NWA. Across the USA, to Japan and to Europe. Often times I was Gold status on their Frequent Flyer program called Worldperks, with one year obtaining Platinum. I had flown my family to Japan twice using FF miles and the special 10th and 20th anniversary trips to Europe for my wife and I.
NWA was started in 1926, mostly as a mail carrier. It developed to become a major airline connecting the US with Asia, particularly Japan. So much so it was called Northwest Orient for many years. It's relationship with Japan gave it favored status to allow for connecting flights in Tokyo to further asia destinations, something that at the time no other US carrier was allowed to do. NWA also maintained a large cargo operation, the largest among US carriers.
In 2008 it merged with Delta Airlines causing Delta to become the world's largest airline at the time. Before NWA's demise it maintained hubs in Minneapolis (MSP), Detroit (DTW), Memphis (MEM), Amsterdam (AMS) and Tokyo (NRT). It has been destined to be the US launch customer for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, but that never happened, and Delta decided to not keep those options.
I always like the logo of the 1990's for NWA with the arrow in the W pointing to the NW and the "N" embedded. I also liked their Red Tails at the time.