Have a ticket for Northwest for the summer. If there is a strike and the airline goes into liquidation, I understand that federal rules say other airlines will have to honor the ticket and I will not be out any money. Can anyone confirm this?

There is a charge of something like $50, but it's on a space-available basis. Really, I think that your chances of facing this issue are not all that great right now, but there should be more info by the end of the week.

Flyboy, the judge overseeing the case that NW brought against the unions to legally rescind their contracts is going to announce his decision tomorrow.

The NW pilots union voted today to strike and the spokeman said the will if NW changes their payrate and/or work rules.

It doesn't sound good, except for the fact that economists (from what I have read) have stated that if the employees go on strike that will be the end of NW. Then all employees will be out of work..so hopefully some sensible heads can get this worked out.

This bankruptcy judge has already given two deadline extensions because negotiations between the pilots, flight attendants and company were making progress.

It's not impossible that he might do it again this morning because the sides have reportedly been advancing somewhat in their talks.

However, that could just be wishful thinking on my part, since I have NWA tix to Europe on 3/27.

My friends who work for AA and UA say that anybody trying to standby on a ticket from a "liquidated" airline might as well walk to the moon.They would have the lowest priority for a revenue ticket and the airlines cant handle the standbys they have now.

Yes, flights are generally pretty full, with the mainline domestic flights around 80%. But 80% is not 100%.

Also, Southwest's load factor is usually <70%, so even more seats.

But of course, if you're flying out of DTW, MSP or MEM, that's a different story, because NW flies most of the flights out of there. But in other markets, it may take you whole day or several days, but it's possible to get out.

It's true, flying standby if stranded would be very difficult since NW is so large. There could be additional legislation if a failure were to occur simply because the govt loves to poke their noses into this stuff, but I wouldn't wait for that.

I hope you paid for your ticket with a credit card. If so, you'll be able to dispute it and get your money back from the card company should NW fail. Then, airlines have generally offered to waive advance purchase requirements for stranded customers so you could just buy a new ticket and hope you find space.

They've reached a tentative agreement with the FAs, which I thought would be the tougher of the two negotiation sessions. A strike is looking less and less likely.

Generally, you can only dispute a credit card charge within 2-3 months of the charge. If the ticket is for later this year, you may be out of luck with the credit card company.

I think there's an exception when the services haven't been rendered yet. I've had friends who weathered cruise line bankruptcies and all of them eventually received a refund through their credit card companies even though the charges were made more than 2-3 months prior to filing a dispute. I think the limitation applies when you actually receive the goods/services at the time of purchase.

Thank you, Patty, this is good to know!

Is there any news today? Our tickets are to FRA next Friday. I can't seem to find that anything's been decided yet.

Crossing my fingers,
H

http://www.nwa.com/corpinfo/newsc/20...320061658.html

Thinks are looking much better.

It is so good to hear there is hope. Tickets to Amsterdam April 18-26. One a FF one and another one bought on sale. Was looking so forward to this trip during tulip time-never been to Amsterdam. After not doing any traveling for 16 months after knee surgery just hope this one goes. US Air from Charlotte flies the trip,but don't want to buy 2 new tickets.