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Northwest Airlines canceled hundreds of flights over the past three days -- a volume that's much higher than normal -- but the carrier was mum on Monday as to whether travelers should expect these disruptions to persist over the heavy summer travel season.

The pilots union on Monday blamed Northwest management for causing many of the cancellations because, the union argues, there aren't enough pilots scheduled to fly the summer schedule.

"We have been advising the company for months about the staffing problems, and now they are coming true," said Monty Montgomery, a spokesman for the Northwest branch of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA).

Montgomery said there were at least 240 Northwest flights canceled over the weekend. The airline cited weather problems but declined to say how many flights were dropped.

"Recent severe weather events have caused Northwest to experience crew shortages, which have resulted in some flight cancellations," the airline said in a statement. "Northwest is working to correct the situation."

FlightStats, a private company that tracks flights for airline consumers, reported on its website (www.flightstats.com) that 159 Northwest flights were canceled on Saturday and another 193 were dropped from Sunday's schedule. Based on those figures, about 13 percent of Northwest's flight schedule was canceled over the weekend. In a typical month, Northwest cancels fewer than 2 percent of its flights.

By 6 p.m. Monday, FlightStats listed 165 Northwest flight cancellations or 12 percent of its Monday schedule.

"The system is strung too tightly to accommodate any type of interruption and it tends to have a ripple effect," said Meara McLaughlin, a FlightStats vice president. Bad weather and congested air space can cause cancellations on a particular day.

But McLaughlin noted that other carriers that serve Northwest's two big hubs -- the Twin Cities and Detroit -- did not cancel significant numbers of flights over the weekend.

She said that fact suggests that there is some management, employee or information system issue contributing to the major disruptions in Northwest's flight operations.

'No confidence' vote

On June 15, the pilots' union executive council passed a resolution expressing "no confidence" in Northwest's management because the pilot leaders said they feared an operations meltdown loomed.

"We were concerned that the airline was not staffed to acceptable levels," Montgomery said.

Pilots are upset that the cancellations are causing the company to lose revenue as well as goodwill with its passengers, he said.

There has been a high degree of animosity between the pilots' union leadership and management. Many pilots contend that Northwest demanded excessive concessions from the pilots, who took pay cuts and agreed to other contract changes that are saving the company $608 million per year.

Although the pilots' pension plan was saved during bankruptcy and pilots have sold an $888 million bankruptcy claim, many pilots are angered by the stock awards granted to Northwest's top executives, including an estimated $26.6 million to CEO Doug Steenland.

Montgomery said pilots consider those awards to be "outrageous" when pilots are expected to work longer hours for much lower pay.

He laid the blame for cancellations squarely at the feet of Northwest management.