Northwest employees should not pick up an inordinate amount of the fuel costs.

It's a corporate shell game of transferring assets and franchise value to a new company.

Every time (Northwest negotiators) get at the table and they think they have an advantage, they want to gut the contract.

That is not where we need to be, ... We're looking at other ways to satisfy their financial concerns without destroying our contract. ... We would like to get a deal but we will we will not do a bad deal in the interest of timeliness. It has to satisfy the concerns of our members.

Northwest is running out of time. New labor agreements will be in place this fall _ either voluntarily or through the bankruptcy court. We think we can fare better through voluntary negotiations than by having an agreement mandated by a bankruptcy judge.

Despite today’s filing, the collective bargaining agreement between ALPA and NWA remains in full effect. We expect NWA to honor the spirit of the agreements it made with pilots who have invested so much in their company.