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Northwest Airlines said it will cut flights and may hire more pilots to help ease crew shortages that forced cancellation of 12% of its schedule last week.

To prevent future pilot shortages, the fifth-largest U.S. carrier will drop a daily flight to Germany on July 18 and trim domestic flying by 3% starting in August, Northwest said in a statement last week.

The airline also "will initiate new pilot hiring, if necessary" after recalling the rest of the pilots still on furlough, the airline said.

Northwest cited bad weather, air-traffic-control congestion and an 80% surge in pilot absenteeism over a year earlier for the hundreds of canceled flights last week. It didn't give a total. Airline-data tracker FlightStats put the count at 1,210 through June 22 through 28.

"I'm still concerned that this won't solve the problem," Monty Montgomery, spokesman for Northwest's chapter of the Air Line Pilots Assn., said of the airline's changes.

The union says Northwest lacks enough pilots after reorganizing during bankruptcy, which it left May 31, and says talks began with management June 27 to address the staffing shortage.