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Shares of Northwest Airlines soared 22 percent Friday amid reports that it was in talks to be acquired by Fort Worth, Tex.-based American Airlines.

A spokesman for Northwest Airlines Corp., the parent of the Eagan, Minn.-based airline, and AMR Corp., the parent of the nation's second-largest carrier, declined to comment on the reports, which were first aired by a St. Paul, Minn., television station.

AMR Chairman and Chief Executive Don Carty is said to have discussed a possible merger of the two carriers with John Dasburg, the chairman and chief executive of Northwest.

Shares of Northwest closed at $35.44, up $6.44, on the Nasdaq stock market, while shares of AMR closed at $28.25, down $1.19, on the New York Stock Exchange.

The report comes as no surprise. Industry observers have anticipated that American or Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines would be forced to merge with another carrier because of last week's surprise announcement that UAL Corp., the parent of United Airlines, was seeking to acquire US Airways, the nation's sixth-largest airline.

"Doing nothing is not a tenable option for American and Delta," said Samuel Buttrick, airline analyst at PaineWebber.

But Buttrick said the talks, if they were held, may be just "exploratory," while the industry attempts to digest the effect of the pending US Airways acquisition.

A Northwest-American combination would allow American to keep up with United in size. It also would allow American to leapfrog United's strong Pacific network by adding Northwest's dominant Asian service. Northwest is the nation's fourth-largest carrier.

But it would saddle American with four Midwest hubs_Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, Minneapolis, Detroit and Memphis_in addition to its largest hub at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

The US Airways deal will allow United to complete a northeast U.S. network that it has lacked for decades. But it will saddle United with three East Coast hubs_Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Charlotte, N.C._two of which are being sharply challenged by competitors.

Buttrick and other analysts said both deals have only a 50 percent chance of being approved.

Meanwhile, United pilots, who oppose their airline's merger, reiterated on Friday that they "are unhappy with this deal as it is presently structured...and cannot at this time support the transaction," said Captain Herb Hunter, the spokesman for the United unit of the Air Lines Pilots Association.

Hunter said a "very strong" majority of the union's 27-member master executive council voted to express opposition to the merger on Friday after three days of meetings.

While pilots don't have veto power over the merger, United could find it nearly impossible to carry out the plan effectively without their support.

Pilots said they now are looking for James E. Goodwin, chairman and chief executive officer of UAL, to "put something substantive" on the table when negotiations resume on Monday with the help of the National Mediation Board.

Hunter said United pilots failed to agree about how to proceed with the merging the seniority lists of pilots from United and US Airways.

"It seems like our pilots could lose in this deal," Hunter said. US Airways pilots are older and more experienced than United, which has been hiring hundreds each year for the past decade.

However, discussions over the merging of seniority lists could be delayed for some time.

Rodney Slater, secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, on Thursday questioned whether an industry merger study needs to conducted by his department before considering any applications. Requiring a study would likely delay any consideration of the deal until next year.

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