It seems to have been a false alarm. Someone else on the mailing list posted the following newspaper article [text in brackets is my addition]:
Reuters: NWA urges partner KLM to ally with Air France-paper
Northwest Airlines, the long-standing transatlantic partner of KM, is urging the Dutch airline to select Air France and not British Arways as its alliance partner, a newspaper said on Saturday.
Dutch evening paper NRC Handelsblad [very reliable I may add], reporting from a fleet renewal presentation by NWA in Detroit, quoted Northwest president Doug Steenland as saying; “From our point of view it can only be Air France.” KLM is keeping the markets waiting for what may be the most important decision in the airline’s 84-year history.
Chief executive Leo van Wijk has said the Dutch company, which has the colour sky blue on its fuselage, will make a decision before the end of the year but there are increasing signs such a decision may be just months or weeks away.
At stake is whether Europe’s fourth-largest carrier joins the Skyteam of Air France and Delta Air Lines or “oneworld” of British Airways and American Airlines AMR.
The international airline industry is consolidating around just three alliances — the other being the Star Alliance with Lufthansa and UAL that can offer the best connection networks, lowest handling and maintenance costs and biggest marketing power.
KLM officials say that talks with Air France are more intense than those with BA. Financial analysts polled by Reuters expect a pact with Air France.
Whatever the decision, in the longer run KLM is expected to be absorbed into either the French or British company.
KLM and Northwest have had a transatlantic alliance since 1989 when KLM took a 20 percent stake in the Minneapolis-based airline as a step towards forming its own “Wings” global alliance. But in 1997 KLM sold the stake back to NWA and they signed a 10-year commercial agreement.
“There are procedures by which the pact between KLM and Northwest can be broken, but that is not possible before 2007,” Steenland told the NRC, adding that even after that date it would take at least three years to untie the operations.
KLM can ill afford such a messy separation after its unsuccesful 1997 link with Alitalia, broken in 2000 at the cost of a high financial penalty.
“Even after the biggest crisis in commercial aviation, the KLM-Northwest alliance will survive and be one of the most important players on the transatlantic routes for passengers and cargo,” Steenland said.
In the U.S., Delta, Continental and NWA have their own alliance which has a 35 percent market share
Soory for any confusion I may have caused.
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