North by Northwest

Northwest spent 18 months getting ready for the walkout, spending more than $107 million on the contingency plan. It may decide it was a good investment. The airline says it completed about 98% of its flights in the first two days of the strike, although they were weekend days. The union, citing a travel columnist's calculations, says it was closer to 50%, but both sides say to stay tuned.

AMFA failed to persuade the other Northwest unions to honour its picket lines or walk out in sympathy. Unions for pilots, flight attendants, and technical workers seem to be taking Northwest management at its word: wage cuts or bankruptcy. If the airline does reorganise in bankruptcy court, the unions and management will have an easy target for blame, as AMFA's rhetoric ("we'd rather see them bankrupt than take the wage cuts management is demanding") makes it a natural fall guy. On the other hand, the other unions have a strong self-interest in letting the militant AMFA fall deeper onto its sword: the more Northwest can cut maintenance costs with AMFA more or less "off the property" and out of the picture, the less the pilots, flight attendants and technical workers will see their wages trimmed. So perhaps unions are showing solidarity - just not in the old sense.

Fulcrum Group airline securities analyst Susan Donofrio says Northwest is well on its way to getting its costs "quite competitive against not only the legacy airlines, but against the low-fare airlines as well". "All's well that ends well," she quips. No new negotiations have been scheduled.