Northwest May Bid for Several Eastern Assets : Airlines: Eastern’s trustee has said that he’s interested only in offers for the complete airline and that there is no intention to liquidate.

Northwest Airlines’ parent company was reported Monday to be preparing a proposal to take over certain assets of bankrupt Eastern Airlines and to preside over the liquidation of others, but Eastern said it had received no such offer.

Eastern released a statement saying that reports that such an offer was imminent “reflect two inconsistencies with conditions repeatedly cited by Eastern’s trustee, Martin R. Shugrue Jr.” Shugrue has said “Eastern is interested only in offers for the complete airline, with its employees, and that there is no intention to liquidate,” the statement added.

It has been known for some time that NWA Inc. Chairman Alfred A. Checchi has been interested in expanding his airline, and he is reported to have met with officials of some of Eastern’s unions recently. Also, both Northwest and Eastern had said earlier that Shugrue and Checchi had met to discuss a possible merger.

The report of the new proposal, published in the Wall Street Journal, said that Checchi, a Los Angeles businessman who took Eagen, Minn.-based NWA private last year, planned to retain some of Eastern’s assets. He was said to be particularly interested in 80 of Eastern’s newer aircraft; airport gates in Atlanta, where Eastern has a major hub, and maintenance facilities in Atlanta and Miami.

Checchi could not be reached Monday, and Northwest spokesman Alan Muncaster declined to comment on what he described as “speculation and rumors.”

Eastern, a subsidiary of a Houston company now called Continental Airlines Holdings Inc., filed in March of 1989 for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy law. In April of this year, a federal bankruptcy judge in New York appointed Shugrue as the airline’s trustee after all attempts to reorganize the company had failed.

In the statement it released Monday, Miami-based Eastern said, “No change in Eastern’s operations can occur for the foreseeable future.”

The airline added that it is “obliged to entertain any proposals that might be beneficial to Eastern in resolving its Chapter 11 bankruptcy status and restoring the company to a progressive path. Even if an acceptable offer were to arise at some future date, it would probably become part of the overall reorganization plan for Eastern, acceptable to its creditors and the judge of the bankruptcy court.”

Although the Wall Street Journal said Checchi was expected to make his proposal Monday to Eastern and the advisers to its creditors’ committee, several members of the committee said no meeting had been scheduled. Alan Boyd, president of Airbus Industrie of America and chairman of the committee, did not return a reporter’s phone calls. Airbus is one of Eastern’s largest creditors.

Observers were divided Monday as to whether Checchi was really interested in buying Eastern and liquidating part of it.

“I think he is primarily interested in the assets,” said John Mattis, an airline analyst with the Shearson Lehman Bros. investment firm. “He does not want the company. He does not want the labor problems. He does not want the employees or the debt. I am not sure whether, under those conditions, a deal could be worked out.”

Ray Neidl, an airline analyst with the Dillon, Read & Co. brokerage, said that buying Eastern would give Northwest the hub in Atlanta, a part of the country where it does not have a significant presence. But he said a major problem would be Eastern’s unfunded pension liabilities, which total $500 million to $1 billion.

But Neidl added that such a deal “would be good for Eastern’s secured bondholders, because the sale of assets would assure them that they would receive full value. But if the company drags on for a couple of years, its planes would become even older and would lose value.”

Bruce Simon, an attorney for the Air Line Pilots Assn., one of Eastern’s creditors, said the union would continue to “take Shugrue at his word that he would not liquidate the airline.”