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Northwest Airlines pilots reached a deal Friday to save their jobs, and ultimately the airline.

The tentative pact between the pilots union and the airline gives Northwest executives all of the $358 million in annual savings that they were seeking. But it also preserves pilot jobs at an airline that both sides expect will return to profitability.

If the rank and file agrees to the deal, the pilots will have removed the most serious obstacle that the bankrupt Northwest has faced to emerging from its financial straits. While the airline could remain under court protection for some time, having labor pacts with all its unions should allow it to obtain financing and, like United and US Airways, survive bankruptcy intact.

Mark McClain, chairman of the Northwest pilots union, stressed that long-term benefit in announcing the settlement. While calling the concessions "painful," he added that they were "necessary" for a restructuring.

The pilots, McClain added, are approaching a period in which "all of us can distance ourselves from these recent labor struggles and focus on ensuring the future success of Northwest."

For Northwest customers, the news brings the hope that Minnesota's dominant carrier will still be flying this month and in the future.

"The spring break goes on," said Terry Trippler, a Minneapolis-based airline expert with CheapSeats.com.

Trippler said he doesn't think Northwest will suffer any serious loss of traffic from the recent uncertainty, citing the experience of the mechanics strike last August.

"The next day the sun rose on the red tails, and Northwest kept flying," he said.

The pilots were the last, and most powerful, of Northwest's unions to reach a deal with management. Their pact, as well as contracts for flight attendants and ground workers, remains to be ratified. Northwest already has cut the pay of management employees, imposed new pay rates for mechanics and secured cost-cutting deals with three small unions. If the three big unions ratify their deals, Northwest will reach its goal of cutting the airline's labor costs by $1.4 billion a year. That would allow Northwest to return to profitability and compete with lower-cost carriers.

The deal reached Friday was three years in the making. Northwest first asked the pilots for concessions in February 2003. Northwest management and leaders of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) met hundreds of times over the three-year period to debate what changes were needed.

Neither Northwest nor the pilots union released details of the agreement Friday. The union's executive council met Friday night in New York to review the terms and will vote on whether to send the offer to the membership for a vote.

The pilots, who are paid $60,000 to $160,000 a year, had the ability to shut down the airline with a strike, an event that both sides agreed could be fatal to Northwest.

Pilots' past sacrifices

The pilots had made substantial sacrifices going into the talks. In late 2004, the pilots took 15 percent pay cuts, which have saved the airline $250 million a year. In mid-November, pilots accepted an additional temporary pay cut of about 24 percent. Many pilots, who were flying smaller aircraft after Northwest's downsizing, have lost 50 percent or more of their pay, with some forced to sell their houses. The pilots also agreed several weeks ago to the freezing of their defined-benefit pension plan.

At two critical points in the past 10 days, Northwest management sent public signals that it wanted a deal.

Northwest CEO Doug Steenland, who had stayed out of the public eye, said Feb. 22 that management had backed away from its proposal to outsource some flying to a new subsidiary. He also said the pilots would fly new airplanes that will replace aging DC-9s.

That amounted to a public acknowledgement that the company would accede to a union position on a top priority.