Northwest exited ch.11 on Thursday, May 31. 2007. Thoughts??
Due to the extremely poor service and rude personnel at NWA I will never fly NWA again. 
You forgot an option - “it’s in their own hands.”
I’ve never had a major problem with NWA that has been their fault (other than getting screwed over on seat choices because they downgrade their aircraft from a 320 to a 319 (or vice-versa) and my seat is suddenly an exit row seat). For my common route (RDU-MLI), on which there are only 5 airline choices, I get my choice of connecting via ORD, ATL, or a NWA hub. I’ve never been delayed for MSP or DET for things like excessive traffic; I can’t say the same for ORD and ATL.
As for customer service they’ve generally been as good as any other major airline (non-lcc) in my experience. I don’t expect to be treated like a king, just to get where I need to go in a reasonable amount of time, and NWA is at least capable of doing that.
My all time favorite is when they “delayed” a flight from 9:00 at night until 6:00 the next morning, make you leave the airport, you have to pay for your own accomadations (because the flight was delayed, not canceled), then don’t give you a bording pass to get through security because you were on yesterdays flight.
I would much rather have that option. What other option is there- cancel the flight completely? Then you have to find a place for everyone on that flight on some other flights in the upcoming days; if you were supposed to be on a large plane or on a busy route around the holidays that could take you several days to fit in. It might seem customer unfriendly, but I think it’s better than the possibly alternatives.