I had a confirmed ticket for NY from Mumbai scheduled to travel in April on Northwest but my confirmation was cancelled from my ticketing department , and when I enquired I got the following information:
Due to overbooking several west bound airlines are offloading confirmed passengers , because of the developing situation in Middle East.Many US carriers like United, American Airlines, Delta , Northwest and many are asked to draft their aircrafts for military cargo service to transport military personnel etc.As of now , nearly 50 passenger planes and 30 wide bodied cargo planes in US are diverted from regular civilian services.Few routes are cancelled and advanced confirmations cancelled.
Its impact on Indian outbound service is that Northwest will be operating smaller DC10 aircrafts instead of regular 747-400 between Mumbai-Amsterdam and other routes from start of March to Mid-April.As a result there is a direct reduction of 100 to 170 seats per flight.Hence the bookings are totally in disarray atleast from Mumbai and Delhi.
Even the handbagage weight is reduced to 8 kgs tp accomodate overhead binspace.
Therefore to be on the safer side confirm your seats right in advance and arrive much earlier to airport to get prevent yourself from being on the offloaded passengers list !