Delta CEO tells senator no merger deal yet

Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson attends a news conference in Roissy, near Paris October 17, 2007. Anderson told a U.S. senator on Tuesday there is no merger agreement yet with Northwest Airlines, but the two sides continue to work toward a deal.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chief executive of Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) told a U.S. senator on Tuesday there is no merger agreement yet with Northwest Airlines NWA.N, but the two sides are continuing to work toward a deal.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, told Reuters in an interview that she spoke with Richard Anderson earlier in the day and he told her the airlines continue to work with their pilots on getting union support for consolidation.

Klobuchar said the Delta CEO did not have a specific time frame for a deal, but one source briefed on the matter told Reuters earlier that an announcement was possible within the next day or two.

The airlines have refused to comment substantively on merger discussions. Delta would not comment on reports that the boards of both carriers were scheduled to meet on Wednesday.

In a letter to Klobuchar, Anderson and Northwest chief executive Doug Steenland discussed their vision of consolidation in attempt to reassure lawmakers concerned about possible service cuts and job losses.

The executives said they favor any merger that would offer greater efficiency and service improvements, not job cuts or contraction of routes or hubs.

"Any merger we might contemplate would be a transaction that succeeds through the power of addition, not subtraction," the two wrote on February 8.

"Benefits would be achieved through service improvements and greater efficiency, not by fare increases, schedule reductions or layoffs," Anderson and Steenland said.

The letter released by Klobuchar's office on Tuesday.

(Reporting by John Crawley, with additional reporting by Kyle Peterson in Chicago and Jui Chakravorty Das in New York. editing by Gunna Dickson)