Northwest drops flights
through Labor DayThe airline lays off 27,500 nationwide
By Russ Lynch
Star-BulletinMore than 900 Hawaii workers were laid off today as a result of the pilots' strike that shut down Northwest Airlines Friday.
A total of 110 employees at an independent catering operation at Honolulu Airport, which makes inflight meals for Northwest, were told they will be out of work as of midnight tonight.
That move came hours after Northwest Airlines Corp. laid off close to 800 of its own Hawaii-based workers, among 27,500 employees across the country who got "no work" notices.
The catering business, Dobbs International Services Inc., said one of its two flight kitchens at Honolulu airport was affected. The Ualena Street facility employs 145 and normally prepares 3,600 meals a day for Northwest flights and about 1,900 meals for other airlines.
"It's too bad and we hate it for our employees," said Sherry Cox, a spokeswoman at the Dobbs corporate headquarters in Memphis, Tenn. "We kept them on an additional five days, as long as we could. We were able to extend their insurance coverage," but there was no way to keep them on, Cox said.
"We're very concerned about them but they will be on call," for when the strike ends, she said.
Local layoffs by the airline itself included 478 flight attendants. Also told not to report for work were mechanics, customer service representatives, ramp workers and aircraft cleaners, said Nani Mahoe, Northwest district sales manager in Honolulu.
The numbers were not final late this morning, Mahoe said, since some workers will be needed at airport counters to help displaced passengers and a few mechanics might also be needed. Some are also being kept on in the cargo operations, but the airline said most of its Hawaii employees have been let go for the time being.
In all, Northwest employs 1,200 people in Hawaii, including the 397 striking pilots."It's really a sad day for our carrier and more importantly, not a good day for our people based in Hawaii," Mahoe said. "It's not a good day for the state."
The layoffs came as Northwest canceled all its flights through the Labor Day holiday on Monday and announced that even after the strike ends it will take eight to 10 days to get personnel back in place and get in the air again.
Negotiations have broken off but the Air Line Pilots Association is expected to meet with management representatives and a federal mediator Saturday to discuss reconvening the talks.
"These people are not talking to each other, they're talking at each other -- they have diametrically opposite missions," said CIBC Oppenheimer Corp. analyst Julius Maldutis. "This could be a much longer conflict than anyone realizes."
As the strike goes on, Northwest is working with other airlines to find space for Northwest passengers and cargo.
Progress is being made in Hawaii, airline officials said.
"We've got such a good relationship with our customers. We're trying to work with them," said Christie Everson, a spokeswoman for Northwest's cargo operations in Hawaii.
Northwest gave cargo customers plenty of advance notice of the possible strike and began to work out alternatives well ahead of last Friday's deadline. "Hopefully they left happy and they'll come back" once it is over, Everson said.
One of the problems is that taking Northwest's passengers means taking their luggage too. That cuts into available space in the cargo hold, said Frank Thomas, general manager of customer service for United Airlines at Honolulu Airport.
"We've got a backlog as of now, about 50,000 pounds," Thomas said late yesterday. That was freight originally intended to be shipped out aboard Northwest but transferred to United because of the strike.
Cargo has been placed on standby, waiting for available space, just as the Northwest passengers have, but things are beginning to clear up, Thomas said.
"We are starting to get a lot of the passenger standbys out of town. The volumes are dropping off naturally just because of the time of the week," between weekends, he said.
Thomas said many people made duplicate bookings in advance of the strike, to ensure they would get a seat on some other airline. "Those are starting to filter out now," he said.
Big freight customers of Northwest, such as Del Monte Fresh Produce Inc. and the U.S. Postal Service, said they have been able to find cargo space on other airlines.
The strike by Northwest's 6,200 pilots around the world, started around 6 p.m. Friday Hawaii time and the airline canceled all its flights.
The daily Hawaii schedule flights shut down are five Honolulu-mainland round trips and four Honolulu-Japan round trips.
In normal times, Northwest brings some 20,000 people to Hawaii each week, about half of them from Japan. Japan Airlines has added extra Japan-Hawaii flights to meet the demand from the strike.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
