Some isle
Northwest flights
delayed, canceled

The mechanics strike is
not necessarily the cause,
a company spokeswoman says

At Honolulu Airport, Northwest Airlines has had some delayed and canceled flights in the past few days, but it is not clear if they were caused by the mechanics strike.

Passengers on Northwest Flight 99 from Minneapolis to Hawaii yesterday were delayed by about an hour and a half because crews had loaded food and water for the flight onto the wrong airplane.

The delay was good news for honeymooners Kevin and Sarah Carney of Green Bay, Wis., who were headed for Kauai. Their flight from Green Bay to Minneapolis turned around after 10 minutes in the air because of a latch malfunction and was delayed for about 90 minutes. The couple arrived at Minneapolis about 9:25 a.m. and dashed through the terminal to try to make their 9:30 a.m. flight to Honolulu.

They boarded at 9:35 a.m. If not for the delay, they would have missed the flight to Hawaii.

"The wedding was so stressful," Sarah said. "We were just happy to get on a plane and sit for eight hours."

Kevin said, "This is nothing compared to the last few weeks."

About 4,400 unionized mechanics, cleaners and custodians at Northwest walked off the job Saturday morning, and no new talks are scheduled. Northwest has employed a small army of replacement mechanics to work on its planes.

Tracy Carlson, a Northwest spokeswoman, said operations generally were normal throughout the airline's system, but referred specific inquiries to the company's Web site, which indicated no major delays on scheduled flights from Honolulu to Minneapolis, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.

Carlson said that any delays or cancellations were not necessarily a result of the strike. "We have cancellations every day, just like any other airline," she said.

On Friday a round-trip Northwest flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Honolulu was canceled, said Scott Ishikawa, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation. On Saturday a flight scheduled to arrive from Los Angeles at 6 p.m. arrived five hours late.

Also on Saturday, a flight scheduled from Seattle to Maui was diverted to Honolulu because of low oil pressure in one of the plane engines. Hal Myers of the Air Line Pilots Association said the pilots had to throttle back the troubled engine over the Pacific Ocean and make the rest of the trip with support of just one engine. Some 230 passengers were left without a place to stay on Oahu, so the Department of Transportation opened a conference center, where stranded passengers stayed overnight, Ishikawa said.

Ishikawa said he did not know if any of the glitches during the weekend were caused by the strike. Myers said engine failures were not uncommon and that such an incident would go relatively unnoticed if Northwest were not under scrutiny because of the mechanics strike.

Northwest represents 11 percent of the airline seats serving Honolulu, with an average of 324 flights a month, said Frank Haas, marketing director for the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

News of the strike broke as 16-year-old Chassidie Cutler of Des Moines, Iowa, who has a spinal cancer, was preparing for a trip to Hawaii sponsored by the Make-a-Wish Foundation. "We wondered would we be able to go when we planned, and she was so excited to go," said Chassidie's mother, Missy Cutler.

Their flight from Des Moines was delayed yesterday for about an hour, but the Cutlers did not have any problem making the connection in Minneapolis.

"We're leaving to have some fun," Chassidie said as they picked up their luggage in the baggage claim area of Honolulu Airport.

"She deserves some fun," her mother said.