MINNEAPOLIS - Dave Danielson isn't particularly worried as he ponders how the bankruptcy of Northwest Airlines Corp. will affect his airport.

Danielson is manager of the Chisholm-Hibbing Airport in northeastern Minnesota, which is served by two daily Northwest Airlink roundtrips to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

"From what I understand, we are assured to have air service here," Dave Danielson said.

In North Dakota, where Northwest carries 78 percent of the passenger load, officials there are also confident the airline won't make any major service cuts.

And while airport managers in South Dakota are waiting to see how Northwest's Chapter 11 bankruptcy plays out, they haven't heard indications that they'll be hurt.

Northwest Airlines plans to become a leaner airline, flying fewer planes as it restructures under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But airline watchers and public officials in the region don't expect any major realignment of Northwest's schedules in the near term, including routes flown by Northwest's Mesaba and Pinnacle regional partners.

More likely, experts say, Eagan-based Northwest will trim flights here and there, perhaps switching to smaller planes on routes where the traffic doesn't warrant bigger planes, and switching more flying to their regional partners.

"Maybe we'll see a one-flight-a-day reduction to Seattle, or a one-flight-a-day reduction to New York or Boston," said Terry Trippler of CheapSeats.com.

Joel Denney, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, said he, too, expects a "fine-tuning" of Northwest's business, rather than wholesale exits from major routes, and he expects capacity reductions that will give Northwest the ability to raise fares.

Northwest President and CEO Doug Steenland indicated that was the plan when the airline announced its Chapter 11 filing on Wednesday. He told reporters Northwest would become "somewhat smaller" but would generally look the same as it does now.

"But instead of there being however many frequencies to Los Angeles or the like, there might be one fewer," Steenland said. "We're talking about changes of that type of magnitude."

That fits with the understanding of North Dakota officials, including Sen. Byron Dorgan and Gov. John Hoeven, who met with Steenland and other Northwest officials two weeks ago in a successful effort to avert planned service cuts. Gary Ness, director of the North Dakota Aeronautics Commission, said they specifically asked what would happen if Northwest declared bankruptcy.

"They said they did not see any change in our service levels at that time," Ness said.

Northwest and its affiliates currently carry about 78 percent of the passenger load in and out of North Dakota.

"We do expect they'll continue service, and we'll just wait to see what transpires," said Don Canton, Hoeven's spokesman.

Mike Marnach, who runs the Sioux Falls airport, noted that United - which is also in Chapter 11 - just passed Northwest as the largest carrier serving Sioux Falls.

Aberdeen, S.D., was already scheduled to drop from six to five daily round-trip flights to the Twin Cities starting Oct. 1, but airport manager David Osborn said his city will actually pick up a few seats because of bigger planes on the route.

Northwest has said it plans to reduce its capacity systemwide by 5 percent to 6 percent and 7 percent to 8 percent domestically in the fourth quarter, compared with the fourth quarter last year. In an early indicator of its specific plans, Northwest said in a bankruptcy court filing that it wants to take 28 Boeing 757-200s out of its fleet by returning them to leaseholders.

Those planes are typically used on flights between Northwest's hubs, such as Minneapolis-St. Paul and Detroit, and larger airports such as Las Vegas, Seattle, New York-LaGuardia, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, San Francisco and Phoenix, said Michael Allen of BACK Aviation Solutions, an aviation data and consulting firm.

Allen said Northwest will probably replace some of the 757s serving those routes with different airplanes, Allen said, pointing to smaller, easier-to-fill planes in Northwest's fleet such as Douglas DC-9s and Airbus A320s.

Denney said it may also make sense for Northwest to consolidate certain international routes by serving them just through Detroit, its largest hub, instead of both Detroit and the Twin Cities.

If Northwest does eventually shed marginal routes, other airlines probably won't find it profitable to pick them up, Denney said.

And the experts don't expect low-fare carriers such as Southwest Airlines Co. and JetBlue Airways Corp. to start poaching on Northwest's home turf because of its Chapter 11 filing. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has long tried to lure them, without success.

JetBlue spokeswoman Jenny Dervin said that while her airline will be watching any Northwest schedule reductions closely, JetBlue prefers to serve popular destinations with high frequency before adding brand new service to a city.

"We're not ruling anything out," Dervin said. "It's been JetBlue's policy from the very beginning to be flexible and respond with speed to any change in the marketplace."