Dual-coded flights will ease merger

While their merger plan continues to work its way through channels for final government approval, Northwest and Delta are making more operational changes to ease the transition to a single company. In the latest move, they have won approval to expand their code-sharing to new Pacific/Asia markets. Effective August 30, both airlines’ codes will appear on Northwest flights from Detroit to Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, Japan; from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Tokyo; and from Honolulu to Tokyo and Osaka. Northwest will also put the Delta code on its flights from Tokyo Narita to Seoul, Singapore and Bangkok; and Northwest’s code will go onto Delta’s daily Atlanta-Tokyo flights. “The expanded code-share markets will augment existing transpacific code-share flights from Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles,” Northwest said. In a progress report on the DL/NW merger, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that the approval process appears to be going smoothly, as Congress apparently has no interest in examining the deal any further. “With no more congressional reviews planned, conventional wisdom now holds that the proposed merger…will be completed this year without any major new political objections,” the newspaper said.