Striking Northwest Airlines mechanics picketed quietly at Honolulu International Airport yesterday, handing information sheets to passengers entering the terminal.

And the airline's flight operations appeared to go smoothly without the union mechanics, cleaners and custodians who walked off the job rather than take pay cuts and layoffs that would have reduced their ranks almost by half.

Although the company declined to provide specifics, Northwest said there were few cancellations and most flights were on time yesterday.

"We haven't seen any difference in anything so far," said John Tebbets of Honolulu, who was seeing off a friend bound for Seattle. "It's been business as usual."

Other passengers were not so happy. After a 10-day visit to China and two days of rest and relaxation in Hawai'i, Buck and Anne Calloway of Hickory, N.C., along with three family members, hit a snag at the Northwest check-in counter.

"We were supposed to leave at 5:30 to Minneapolis and on to Charlotte," said Buck Calloway, who is retired from the Air Force. "And now we're going out at 8:30 — a three-hour delay."

The clincher was learning that the family would be traveling on two different flights.

"We have a heart patient with us, and instead of putting him with his family on the 8:30 flight, they've left him on the 5:30 flight because it's too inconvenient to move his oxygen tanks over to the 8:30 plane," Buck Calloway said.

"I'm really upset," Anne Calloway said. "You don't wanna hear it."

The Calloways said they didn't know if the changes were a result of the mechanics' strike.

The airline switched to its fall schedule yesterday, a few weeks earlier than usual, lightening the schedule by about 17 percent.

"We never thought there was going to be an instantaneous effect from us walking off the job," said Steve MacFarlane, the union's national assistant director. "We're confident that over a period of time it begins to snowball, and they're going to have a real problem maintaining their schedule."

O'ahu resident and frequent flier Darcie Inoue said she had never traveled on Northwest before, but everything seemed to be going according to plan.

Meanwhile the picketers handed out their fliers.

"We want people to know we're not asking for a pay raise," said lead Northwest mechanic David Kohrer, one of 17 striking Northwest technicians and five cleaners in Hawai'i.

"We're fighting for a 16 percent pay cut and a 20 percent reduction in our medical benefits. The company wants us to take a 25 percent pay cut and agree to the elimination of half our workers."

On Friday, some 4,500 Northwest technicians represented by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association went on strike rather than agree to the company's proposals. They said they believe replacement workers won't be able to maintain Northwest's fleet, the oldest among domestic airlines.

The airline has hired about 1,200 contract technicians as replacements. Strikers said locally the company had hired about a dozen contract workers.

Local Northwest employees would not comment on the strike. A Northwest supervisor at the airport answered a media inquiry by giving the reporter a Mainland phone number.

"We have always tried to reach a consensual agreement with our employees," said Northwest spokeswoman Jennifer Bagdade in Minneapolis when contacted by The Advertiser. "The final company offer was fair to our employees while recognizing this need that we had for equitable labor cost savings from all of our labor groups."

Bagdade said for some time Northwest has been talking about achieving $1.1 billion in cost savings so that the nation's fourth-largest airline could restructure.

The mechanics' portion of the cuts totals $176 million, Julie Hagen Showers, Northwest vice president for labor relations, said at a news conference yesterday in Minneapolis.

Showers said the company realized that pay cuts are difficult for unions and employees to accept, and that Northwest had tried to keep mechanics' concerns in mind in making its offer.

"Our last best offer provided job protection for 80 percent of the technicians on payroll at Northwest," she said.

The airline ran into at least two problems yesterday in Detroit: One plane blew out four tires as it landed and another made an emergency landing after flight attendants reported smoke in the cabin. No injuries were reported in either incident, and the airline said neither problem had anything to do with the strike.

It's the first major airline strike since Northwest pilots grounded the airline for 20 days in 1998. But this time, the mechanics are striking alone.

Pilots, flight attendants and other ground workers all said they would keep working, and a federal judge barred mechanics at Northwest regional carrier Mesaba Airlines from conducting a sympathy strike.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.