Northwest Hands off Ground Work to Pinnacle

Regional carrier Pinnacle Airlines today will take over Northwest Airlines' ground operations at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City.

Despite the changes, travelers should notice little difference, airport spokeswoman Karen Carney said.

"Even though Pinnacle is now the operator, it is still operating under the Northwest banner, and Northwest Airlines still is the company that has the agreement with the airport," the airport spokeswoman said.

"At this point in time, we don't anticipate the customer seeing any difference. There might be some transitional kinds of challenges just like any kind of business going through transition and personnel changes. But ultimately, we don't anticipate at least at this point in time any changes to services or routes."

The operating change is part of an agreement between Northwest, which filed for bankruptcy in September, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The operations outsourcing is a part of the deal that in its entirety is expected to save Northwest about $1.4 billion in annual labor costs.

Until today, Northwest employed 17 full-time workers and six part-time workers at Will Rogers.

"Any employee who wishes to transfer to another Northwest operation could do that," Northwest spokesman Roman Blahoski said. "Some may elect to take retirement, and others may elect to go to the third-party provider."

For those who wish to do that, we are doing everything we can to make sure that happens." Under terms of the contract settlement, the affected employees of the airline were offered severance of up to 20 weeks of pay and benefits, Blahoski said.

Pinnacle is not new to managing Northwest's operations in Oklahoma. The regional carrier employs 22 people in Tulsa who run the airline's ground operations at Tulsa International Airport. "Everything seems to run pretty smoothly here," said Alexis Higgins, Tulsa International Airport's marketing director.

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