Northwest Airlines will hire more pilots

The Northwest Airlines has announced that they will cut a schedule and hire more pilots. This is because of the raising of canceled flights, so Northwest Airlines made this decission.

As reported in the news release from Detroit News, The Eagan, Minn.-based airline, which uses Detroit Metropolitan Airport as one of its hubs, canceled 43 flights Tuesday, including 15 that were scheduled to depart from Detroit.

Northwest also operates major hubs out of Minneapolis and Memphis, Tenn.

As of 9:30 a.m., Northwest has canceled 16 flights today, including two that were scheduled to take off from Detroit. The data comes from www.FlightStats.com.

The memo said that up to 300 new pilots will be hired over the next year after Northwest hires back hundreds more pilots that have been on furlough for months. It also outlined a 3 percent schedule reduction in August.

That follows a promise of 3 percent reduction this month, though it's unclear if that change was fully implemented or what effect, if any, it had.

Yesterday's cancellations followed 62 cancellations on Monday and more than 200 since last Thursday. Northwest initially blamed the grounded flights late last week on strong storms that pushed through the Midwest, but by the beginning of this week, it elected to make no comment on the situation.

Officials at the Air Lines Pilot Association, which represents more than 5,000 active and furloughed pilots at Northwest, said the problem stemmed from a serious staffing shortage, which was the cause of more than 1,000 cancellations at the end of June.

Some furloughed pilots were rehired by Northwest after last month's grounded flights caused a public stir among customers whose travel plans were disrupted.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. You can reach Nathan Hurst at (313) 222-2293 or nhurst@detnews.com.

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Northwest continues to ground flights... by Nathan Hurst