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Mesaba Airlines, a feeder carrier for Northwest Airlines Corp., will again ask a bankruptcy judge on Monday for permission to throw out its labor contracts.
Mesaba Aviation Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection in October, about a month after Northwest. Bankruptcy Judge Gregory Kishel rejected Mesaba's first request to reject its contracts with pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics. But the rejection was mostly on technical grounds, and Mesaba quickly corrected those and renewed its request.
Negotiations yielded no new agreement, and no new talks are scheduled before the court hearing on Monday.
All three unions have raised the possibility of a strike if the judge allows Mesaba to impose its terms on them.
Mesaba has said it is losing $2 million to $3 million a month and that it will run out of cash by the end of August unless it gets debtor-in-possession financing. Mesaba is still waiting for Northwest, its only customer, to decide whether Mesaba will keep doing regional flying.
Mesaba parent MAIR Holdings Inc. has withdrawn an earlier offer for such financing. On Thursday, Mesaba spokeswoman Elizabeth Costello said the airline is in talks with two other debtor-in-possession financiers and hopes to have an answer within about a week.
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