NORTHWEST Airlines Corp plans to cut flights and may hire more pilots to help ease crew shortages that forced cancellation of 12 percent of its schedule last week.

Operations should return to normal soon, Eagan, Minnesota-based Northwest said on Friday in a statement. To prevent future pilot shortages, the fifth-largest United States carrier will drop a daily flight to Germany on July 18 and trim domestic flying by three percent starting in August.

Northwest also "will initiate new pilot hiring, if necessary" after recalling the rest of the pilots still on furlough, the airline said.

Northwest has cited bad weather, air-traffic-control congestion and an 80-percent surge in pilot absenteeism over a year earlier for the hundreds of canceled flights last week. It didn't give a total. Airline-data tracker FlightStats put the count at 1,210 through Thursday since June 22.

The airline scrapped 31 flights on Friday, or two percent of its schedule, according to FlightStats. That's the lowest rate this week. Northwest declined to say how it reduced cancellations or how it will resume normal operations at an early date.

"I'm still concerned that this won't solve the problem," Monty Montgomery, spokesman for Northwest's chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, said of the airline's changes.

The union said Northwest lacks enough pilots after reorganizing during bankruptcy, which it left May 31, and that talks began with management on June 27 to address the staffing shortage.

Northwest said it will cut its domestic flight schedule by 90 hours a day in August, representing about 40 flights based on the carrier's average daily schedule, according to Bloomberg News calculations, to increase the reserve of pilot hours.

The pilots' union contract limits them to 90 hours of flying a month, and federal law permits only 10 hours of overtime beyond that. Storms or other delays can eat into that time.