Thursday October 12, 2006 Northwest Airlines will revamp 10 757-200s for an expansion of its transatlantic network announced yesterday. The routes include two new destinations from NWA's Detroit hub and the first nonstop transatlantic service from Hartford's Bradley International Airport. "The combination of our customer-focused WorldGateway at the Detroit hub, competitive costs and the Boeing 757 aircraft, which allows us to match capacity with economically viable demand, has made this major expansion possible," President and CEO Doug Steenland said. NWA will launch daily Hartford-Amsterdam service on July 1. BDL becomes Northwest/KLM's 18th North American gateway to Amsterdam. Five-times-weekly service from Detroit to Brussels will begin May 7 and to Dusseldorf June 5. The latter is the second German destination NWA serves from DTW after Frankfurt. The two routes become daily on June 15. On the same day it will increase frequencies to AMS to five-times-weekly. Winter season flights will grow to four-times-weekly. One month later, a second daily Boston-AMS will be added. NWA also will take over operation of KLM's twice-daily AMS-Newark service. The Dutch carrier will begin operating a third daily New York JFK-Amsterdam flight on July 1. Up to five extra weekly flights will be added between AMS and Los Angeles and Toronto as well, but no further details were provided. The 757s, which must be ETOPS certified, will be fitted with winglets and will seat 160 passengers in two classes. The business class cabin will be reconfigured in a two-aisle-two alignment with 16 new seats, providing passengers with portable on-demand IFE, 1.5 m. of personal space, a computer port and other amenities. Coach will be configured in a three-aisle-three arrangement with 144 seats with 4 in. of additional pitch. by Brian Straus