Northwest promises fewer cancellations in August and beyond

Plagued with excessive numbers of flight cancellations in the last weeks of June and July, Northwest Airlines says it has a handle on the situation and promises its late-month schedules will be more reliable in August and beyond. The airline has claimed that bad weather and excessive absenteeism on the part of pilots were causing the heavy cancellation rate, but the pilots blame the airline for not having enough pilots on staff to work all the flights on the schedule – especially since pilots can only fly 90 hours a month. “Our operational performance in June and July has been unacceptable... Our immediate focus is to restore operational reliability,” said CEO Doug Steenland. Northwest has already announced it will reduce its overall schedule by 4 percent during August. In addition, “Beginning in August, Northwest is reducing the number of long trips in certain fleet types and changing the way we build trips to and from large East Coast cities. This will minimize the impact on the entire system when delays occur due to bad weather and air traffic control congestion,” Steenland said. As of August 1, he added, all furloughed pilots who want to come back to work “will have received their official training date, producing some of the highest numbers of reserve pilots in recent history.” After furloughed pilots are recalled, Northwest will start hiring new pilots, Steenland said. He also reported that Northwest has reached an agreement with its pilots on the settlement of “certain grievance issues.” Finally, Northwest will redeploy “spare international widebody aircraft” on domestic routes, and the company has “improved processes and technology to make customers aware of flight changes as far in advance as possible,” he said.