Northwest Keeps Most Flights on Schedule

Business travelers got their first taste Monday of the strike against Northwest Airlines as the nation’s fourth-largest carrier flew its busiest day since mechanics walked off the job.

Operations were mostly normal, although industry observers said the airline saw more delays and cancellations than usual on a typical weekday.

Northwest has refused to release statistics on delays or cancellations since the strike began Saturday. At midday Monday, a check of the airline’s video screens at its Detroit hub showed delays for 23 out of 120 departures -- about normal. At its Memphis, Tenn., hub later in the day, the screens showed seven of more than 120 flights canceled, none delayed.

Meanwhile, an independent travel expert found widespread delays in the strike’s first two days.

Joe Brancatelli, who publishes a business travel website, sampled 99 of Northwest’s 1,381 Sunday flights and found that 53.5% them left on time, according to Northwest’s website. Using that method on Saturday, he found that only 46.5% of the sampled Northwest flights were on time. The airline has about 1,470 weekday flights.

Company spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch derided Brancatelli’s numbers, but refused to say how many flights had been delayed or canceled. “The survey was unscientific and completely random, and included markets that could have been affected by weather or air traffic, which impact the operations of all airlines, not just Northwest,” Ebenhoch said.

“Our operating performance since AMFA called their strike has been similar to other weekends and Mondays during the month of August,” he said.

It didn’t seem that way to Phil Carlson. The Lakeville, Minn., resident was supposed to be on a 9:30 a.m. flight Monday from Minneapolis to Denver for a business trip. But that was canceled, so he was trying to figure out what he would do for five hours before his afternoon flight.

“I really thought they’d get them out on time, so I didn’t worry about it beforehand,” he said.

About 4,400 Northwest unionized mechanics, cleaners and custodians belonging to the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Assn. walked off the job Saturday morning.

No new talks are scheduled between Northwest and the union, which is refusing to take pay cuts and layoffs that would have reduced its ranks by nearly half. The mechanics averaged about $70,000 a year in pay, and cleaners and custodians averaged about $40,000. The company wants to cut their salaries by about 25%.

Anticipating the strike, Northwest switched to its fall schedule Saturday, a week earlier than planned, lightening its domestic schedule by about 17%.

The Federal Aviation Administration has nearly doubled the number of inspectors monitoring Northwest’s aircraft from 46 to 80, agency spokesman Greg Martin said.

“In terms of our surveillance and oversight, we’ve not seen anything unusual,” Martin said. “The maintenance work is being done deliberately and carefully to Northwest procedures and FAA standards.”

Also Monday, Standard & Poor’s warned that it might downgrade Northwest’s debt because of the strike.

Shares of Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest Airlines Corp. rose 28 cents Monday to $5.66.