For occasional travelers, strike hardly means 'business as usual'

Star Tribune

August 20, 2005 TRAVEL0820



Louisiana Judge Sol Gothard and his wife, Jacqueline, were spitting mad. They had $110 worth of buffalo meat from Montana packed in a cooler stowed in the cargo of a Northwest jet, and pets that had nobody to take care of them back home in Louisiana.

But like some passengers at the airport Friday evening, their flight was delayed. Passengers had been told that planes were being delayed or canceled for mechanical or maintenance reasons.

Northwest Airlines, which has promised "business as usual" if the 4,400 members of its mechanics union strike, declined to comment on the state of operations at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in the hours leading up to the 11:01 p.m. strike deadline Friday.

Sol Gothard, an appeals judge in Louisiana's state courts, didn't know anything about a strike looming until their flight was canceled 10 minutes before boarding.

"They should have made arrangements in advance then, if they knew," he said of Northwest management. "They had an obligation to tell us months ago that the return flight might be in jeopardy. If I knew that, we would have taken a different flight."

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