On Aug. 20, when college students will be flying home from vacations and back to school, and families will be making their Labor Day weekend plans, mechanics at Northwest Airlines could be hoisting picket signs outside Detroit Metro Airport.
The National Mediation Board, the government body that handles airline labor disputes, Wednesday acknowledged that it couldn't broker a cost-cutting deal between Northwest and its unionized mechanics. So while negotiations will almost certainly resume sometime over the next month, the board freed the mechanics to strike at 12:01 a.m., Aug. 20.
Experts who follow the airline industry say it's impossible to know if Northwest's mechanics, represented by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, will walk off the job rather than accept significant pay cuts and layoffs.
But they agree that a settlement won't come until the deadline draws near -- maybe very near -- creating a lot of uncertainty for travelers as the busy summer travel season comes to a close.
"At the very minimum I think it will go the full 15 rounds. I'm not sure how or whether either party will be standing at the end of 15 rounds," said Robert Mann, president of airline consulting firm R.W. Mann & Co. "I think both parties are fixed in their positions."
Northwest said it will be ready to fly a full schedule -- without disruptions -- through a strike by having replacement mechanics, contract workers and third-party companies do the work.
That's optimistic, said Terry Trippler, an airline expert with cheapseats.com. "At the minimum there are going to be delays," he said, because replacement mechanics will need time to adjust to a new work environment.
"I think, more realistically, there are going to be delays and cancellations," he said.
The frequency and length of delays also depend on whether unions representing ramp workers, pilots and flight attendants honor a mechanics strike, said Tom Parsons, founder and CEO of Bestfares.com.
It's unclear if that would occur.
Northwest operates 593 flights a day out of Metro Airport to 163 destinations. Northwest served 59% of the passengers who start or end their trips at Metro Airport for the last three months of 2004. Northwest has 8,800 employees in Michigan, including 900 mechanics and aircraft cleaners based at Metro Airport.
The airline is in serious financial trouble, losing $878 million last year and another $458 million during the first three months of 2005.
To survive the airline says it must cut labor costs by $1.1 billion a year and wants $176 million of that savings from its mechanics. Northwest wants to lay off about half its mechanics and nearly all of its aircraft cleaners -- 2,840 jobs in all -- and require those who remain to take a 25% pay cut.
A company newsletter Northwest plans to send employees later this month says it is prepared to fly through a strike and has almost finished training an unspecified number of replacement mechanics to step in if its unionized workforce walks out.
The airline said its safety standards would remain high during a strike. "We do not and will not dispatch an aircraft if we are not confident that it is in a safe operating condition," Andy Roberts, Northwest's executive vice president of operations, said in the newsletter.
Meantime, mechanics are preparing for a strike by pulling permits to picket, said Steve MacFarlane, assistant director of the union.
President George W. Bush has the authority to seek an end to an airline strike in some cases by appointing a review board if a dispute significantly disrupts transportation. "We're closely watching the developments and hope that an acceptable agreement can be reached," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at his briefing Wednesday. Northwest's stock price rose 15 cents, or 3.2%, to close at $4.78 at the end of trading Wednesday.
