Northwest Airlines sees up to $100 million pretax profit

MINNEAPOLIS -- Northwest Airlines says it could make a pretax profit of $60 million to $100 million in the quarter.

The estimate came from Chief Financial Dave Davis, who was speaking at an airline investor conference in New York on Thursday. The profit prediction did not count potential hedging gains or losses, and the company did not give an earnings-per-share figure.

Northwest says it has $3.3 billion in unrestricted cash as of this week. Northwest is being bought out by Delta Air Lines Inc. The two have said they expect to have about $6 billion in cash after the deal closes.

Northwest is Michigan's largest passenger air carrier.