JAL adds
flights to fill
Northwest void

The Japan airline plans to
add nine extra trips as the
strike deadline nears

From staff and wire reports

Japan Airlines Co., Japan's largest airline, said it will fly nine extra flights to make up for some of those canceled by Northwest Airlines Corp., as that carrier's pilots prepare for a strike.

Yesterday Northwest Airlines, the fourth-largest U.S. carrier, said it's canceling 400 flights tomorrow and Saturday, or 10 percent of the total, as the pilots' walk-out threatens to shut down the St. Paul, Minn., airline.

"It's no problem for us to pour on capacity," said JAL spokesman Geoffrey Tudor.

"We are able to arrange extra flights at short notice." With a fleet of 83, JAL is the biggest Boeing 747 carrier, he said.

JAL will fly seven extra flights between Honolulu and Tokyo or Osaka and two extra flights between Los Angeles and Tokyo, tomorrow through Monday, the airline said.

Northwest yesterday canceled three of its four Friday Honolulu-Japan flights -- two to Tokyo and one to Nagoya -- leaving only one flight tomorrow to Osaka.

It also canceled the two Tokyo-Honolulu and one Nagoya-Honolulu flights that were scheduled for Saturday.

The added JAL flights are limited to Northwest passengers only and will not be sold to other passengers, Tudor said.

"JAL will earn what Northwest would've earned," he said, without elaborating on how much JAL will profit from the extra flights.

Northwest said it will cancel 170 flights tomorrow and 230 Saturday, even if it is able to reach an agreement with pilots to avert the strike.

The strike deadline is 6:01 p.m. Hawaii time Friday.

In its mainland-Hawaii service, Northwest dropped tomorrow's San Francisco-Honolulu flight and one of its two Honolulu-Los Angeles flights.

The crux of the dispute is the pilots' insistence that it's time for Northwest to pay them back for wage cuts they took when the airline was in financial trouble five years ago.

Pilots and other workers say they took voluntary pay cuts of almost $1 billion at the time to keep the airline from bankruptcy.

Northwest said 25,000 people had booked seats on the canceled flights. The airline carries about 150,000 passengers on an average day.