Carriers Add Flights on Strike-Idled Routes

Domestic and foreign airlines scrambled Sunday to add extra seats and flights for stranded passengers as the Northwest Airlines pilots’ strike entered its second day with no resolution in sight.

Many major carriers, including Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Japan Air Lines and Trans World Airlines all said they had added flights to Northwest’s major hubs or switched to larger airplanes on regularly scheduled flights out of those airports.

Approximately 75% of Northwest’s traffic is handled out of its Minneapolis/St. Paul, Detroit and Memphis, Tenn., hubs. The airline also flies to Asia from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

“Obviously, this has meant some additional business for us,” said Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines.

Smith did not have any specific numbers about how many additional customers American has picked up during the pilots’ strike, which is mostly over wage issues. However, at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport alone, more than 600 passengers were re-booked from Northwest, he said.

Starting today, American has scheduled three additional round-trip flights from Detroit and Minneapolis to Chicago. On Saturday, TWA began substituting larger aircraft, such as MD-80s, for some of its DC-9 flights out of those hubs. And on Tuesday, it will add two round-trips a day between the Twin Cities and its hub in St. Louis, accommodating 340 passengers, TWA spokesman Jim Brown said. It also has added reservation agents. Delta also has added five flights; two between Minneapolis and its hub in Cincinnati, and three between Detroit and Cincinnati.

Japan Air Lines said it was planning to add as many as nine flights between Los Angeles and Tokyo, and Honolulu and Tokyo.

But even though the strike is an economic boon for other airlines now, it won’t likely cause many customers to desert Northwest permanently, analysts say. And it could mean lower air fares later.

“The first thing every airlines does after a strike is offer a big sale to get people to come back, and other airlines usually match it,” said aviation analyst Raymond E. Neidl of ING Baring Securities in New York.

Other airlines had to add flights because their regularly scheduled flights are almost fully booked as the summer vacation season comes to a close.

Before the strike, Northwest canceled 400 flights Friday and Saturday, re-booking 25,000 of its passengers. Flights are now canceled through Tuesday.

Northwest is the nation’s sixth-largest airline in terms of passengers and the fourth-largest in revenue. It carries nearly 150,000 passengers and 2.9 million pounds of cargo daily on 1,700 flights to North America, Europe, Asia and India.