EAGAN, Minn. — The lunchtime crowd at the Time Out sports bar talked of two things and two things only Wednesday. The weather. And Northwest Airlines. Fittingly, the two sometimes graced the same conversation.

The restaurant sits a mile from the airlines' "world headquarters," where news could come that up to 1,000 well-paid, white-collar employees could lose their jobs if Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines succeeds in gobbling up Northwest. Sympathy for the possibly job-less workers was universal, as was dismay over the temperature that barely breached the zero degree mark.

AP Photo/Jim Mone (ENLARGE)

Minnesotans, as they like to tell you, are a resilient breed and a Northwest corporate dissolution would be replaced in short order by new jobs and a new identity.

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"Certainly there's some concern over potential loss of jobs for the community," Eagan Mayor Mike Maguire said. "It's disconcerting, but it's weather-able."

The mayor's sentiments were echoed by a repo man, a student and the bartender at the restaurant frequented by Northwest employees during lunch and happy hours. But resignation trumped frustration as the merger talks drag on.

All seemed to accept that the Minneapolis-St. Paul region will lose a Fortune 500 headquarters to Atlanta. Melancholy tinged with pride accompanied the disappearance of the Northwest name, a Minnesota fixture since 1926.

But Minnesotans, as they like to tell you, are a resilient breed and a Northwest corporate dissolution would be replaced in short order by new jobs and a new identity.

"Everything changes," philosophized Kevin Swanlund, the bartender. "It's never good to lose any jobs. But Minnesotans are sought after. We're hard workers. We'll all find something to do. Change is a dynamic of this place."

That certainly appears true in this suburban-industrial town of new office parks, strip malls and subdivisions a few miles from the airport. Despite its stature, Northwest is only the third largest employer in Eagan with 2,300 employees scattered among three buildings.

"We have a very robust economy, not only in Eagan, but in the region," said Ruthe Batulis, president of the local Chamber of Commerce. "It will be a terrible job loss for Eagan, but [Delta is expected] to keep a hub here and preserve most jobs. There's so much rhetoric right now it's hard to figure out what's going on."

The hang-up Wednesday appeared to be pilot labor and seniority issues. Seniority "leads to a lot of confusion and conflict when it gets involved with mergers," said Michael Derchin, an industry analyst with FTN Midwest Securities. "The pilots say they need more time. Management will give them time to get it done before they go to their boards with a deal. It's a delay, not a deal-breaker."

Minnesota's politicians, including Eagan's mayor, have all officially weighed in on the merger, most (but not Maguire) to threaten anti-trust inquiries or tax-break revocations if the deal doesn't protect the airport hub and Northwest's 11,500 statewide employees.

Northwest CEO Doug Steenland and Delta CEO Richard Anderson, in a letter to U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., earlier this month wrote that merger "benefits would be achieved through service improvements and greater efficiency, not by fare increases, schedule reductions or layoffs."

Back at the bar, a student huffed that "maybe we'll get some better service and lower fares" without Northwest's out-sized presence at the Twin Cities' airport. She walked out without giving her name.

"Some would like to see, quite frankly, more competition at the airport. Consolidation could open up more gates," said the mayor. "Others question Northwest's loyalty because the state has given them a lot of incentive money."

But the mayor, by personality and profession, is an upbeat sort. He pronounced Eagan, population 64,000 and the state's eighth most populated city, "blessed by infrastructure." Interstates and the airport will attract business lost by Northwest, he predicted.

"We don't want to lose Northwest here, but at the same time we can go back to the drawing board and figure out what needs to be done," said Maguire, who works for the American Cancer Society which is headquartered, ironically, in Atlanta. "We know here in Eagan that we can weather that storm."