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Here is a news story on NW's plan to restore capacity system wide.

Source: http://www.startribune.com/535/story/458558.html
Agency: Star Tribune
Author: Liz Fedor
Posted: May 27, 2006 - 12:33 AM


With its goal of lower labor costs in sight, Northwest Airlines is preparing to put more planes in the air.

The airline, which slashed its capacity 10 percent early this year, plans to reverse course and expand its flying the remainder of this year and into 2007, according to a Northwest memo obtained this week by the Star Tribune.


The article goes on to say...


The memo doesn't say how many flights Northwest will add or on what routes, but the expansion is large enough that the airline won't go through with previous plans to furlough up to 200 pilots. "In addition, we are forecasting the need to begin recalling pilots next year to support the planned operational growth and normal attrition," Rainey said in the memo.


So this is definately good news. Prior to everything going south last summer NW had approximately 50 daily departures. Lets hope some of those old routes come back as I suspect (minus STL). Also the rumor prior to the mechanical and financial problems was that IND was to see an estimated 70 flights per day. If this is true and if NW plans on resuming that kind of buildup it would be great news for IND.

The logical move seems to be an increase in flights and seats as NW picked up the 3 gates and increased their schedule. The schedule got decreased but they have kept the 8 total gates and the speculation that more is wanted. This would be completely inconsistent with keeping a schedule at 44 (give or take) flights a day.