McIntosh

Northwest Airlines, which flies daily into Montego Bay, is facing disruptions in its service if a planned strike by 8,000 flight attendants proceeds.

On Friday, the airline said it would not speak of its contingency plans, if the strike were to go ahead.

"We really don't have a comment at this time; not until the ruling is made," Roman Blahoski, media relations officer at Northwest's corporate offices told Sunday Business.

The airline's Montego Bay Station Manager Denise McIntosh referred calls to the corporate office, but was still accepting bookings based on calls to its reservation counter.

The airline has asked a US judge to ban the strike, saying it could affect 130,000 passengers and 1,200 flights per day.

Northwest flies to more than 700 destinations.

Blahoski said that while the airline is expecting a ruling by Monday, one could be handed down earlier.

It later emerged Friday that the flight attendants had postponed the strike for 10 days to August 25.

Traffic volume

The airline said if it lost even a fifth of its traffic volume, it could be forced to liquidate, according to wire reports.

"If we lost 20 per cent of our traffic, we could not sustain ourselves," said Northwest Airlines Corp Vice President Julie Hagen Showers. "It would clearly put us on the brink of collapse and in danger of liquidation."

The airline had expected to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy by 2007, but fears that without a wage deal with flight attendants, those plans could falter.

Northwest has been negotiating wage cut packages with various employee groups - the airline employs about 30,000 workers - for targeted savings of US$1.4 billion.

It has struck deals with all other groups except flight attendants, whose new contracts call for up to US$195 million of concessions. Pilots, baggage handlers, ground workers and clerical workers had agreed to concessions earlier.

Federal bankruptcy judge Allan Gropper is expected to rule by Monday on whether to bar the flight attendants from going on strike, following his hearing last week of an application for a preliminary injunction.

Gropper also considered a request by the union to change the terms of a concessions deal the airline imposed.

"I think a cooling-off period would be of enormous value, but I have no power, unlike the NMB (National Mediation Board), to impose a cooling-off period," Gropper said Wednesday before he adjourned the hearing.

Rick Thornton, a spokesman for the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), said the judge might issue his ruling in the case by Monday.

The flight attendants had given notice they would begin random, unannounced work stoppages starting at 10:01 pm EDT on August 15 (0201 GMT on August 16) to protest the terms of a contract they said were imposed on them unilaterally.

The AFA announced its strike plans on July 31, when Northwest Airlines imposed new contract terms after the flight attendants had rejected a second tentative agreement for concessions. The flight attendants joined the AFA on July 7.

The union pioneered the use of CHAOS, or Creating Havoc Around Our System, a form of striking that includes intermittent, targeted work stoppages.

An AFA spokeswoman said the union had been and is conducting training sessions in preparation for the strike.

The AFA argued that its members have the right to strike since the company altered their contract unilaterally.

But Northwest says the Railway Labor Act, which governs the airline industry, barred a strike.

The question

"The question before me today is a fairly narrow one of the intersection between the bankruptcy code and the Railway Labor Act," Judge Gropper said last week.

The flight attendants also asked the judge to alter the terms of the 21 per cent in wage cuts and work rule changes that the airline imposed.

The flight attendants were the last group that had not reached a deal.

Northwest filed for bankruptcy protection on September 14, 2005. In a filing this week with the Securities and Exchange Com-mission, Northwest said it is on-track to exit bankruptcy in the first half of 2007.

It said its business plan assumes oil priced at US$75 a barrel, and that it has hedged a quarter of its fuel for up to US$79.60 a barrel for the rest of this year, but has no fuel hedges in place after that.

- Reuters and Gleaner reports