US Airways' 5,200 flight attendants voted yesterday to authorize a strike if a bankruptcy judge throws out their contract next month.

The nation's seventh-largest airline maintains that a strike would not only be illegal but also would ground the airline and send all flight attendants to the "unemployment line," said company spokeswoman Amy Kudwa.

"That option would not be in anyone's best interest."

US Airways wants $157 million in concessions from the flight attendants, part of a larger $1 billion request from all labor groups that the company claims will give it a "fighting chance" to survive its second bankruptcy. The Arlington, Va.-based carrier is asking a federal bankruptcy judge to cancel the contract of unions that do not agree to consensual cuts.

Hearings on the request continue today, but the judge is not expected to rule until January.

Negotiators for the Association of Flight Attendants, one of three employee groups without a consensual cost-cutting agreement, were said on Friday to be $10 million apart on the company's request for pay and benefit cuts. The airline also wants to eliminate the flight attendants' pension plan and cut retiree health care.

An airline spokeswoman said yesterday that, "we continue to work towards a deal." But union president-elect Teddy Xidas said the two sides had reached an "impasse," with several items unresolved.

Other than the flight attendants, the machinists and baggage handlers are the only other work groups at US Airways not to have new concessionary agreements in place.

The pilots have already approved more than $300 million in pay and benefit changes, and the passenger service workers are voting on a $150 million cost-cutting deal reached by their negotiators earlier this month. Those votes will be counted Dec. 23.

The last airline to have contracts abrogated while in bankruptcy was Continental Airlines, which persuaded a judge to void all agreements upon filing in 1983. But bankruptcy laws have changed since then, and legal experts said it is now unclear whether a union would have the right to strike if a judge cancels its contract at US Airways.

Labor officials have criticized US Airways for using bankruptcy court to cut retirement and health care benefits, and the AFA is planning a protest today in Washington, D.C. It has threatened a nationwide strike against 26 airlines if any carrier, including US Airways, ditches its contracts while in bankruptcy.

"We will not stand by while our employers destroy our careers in a desperate attempt to cover for their mistakes," said Pat Friend, the AFA's national president.

Frank Lorenzo, Continental's chairman in 1983, said in a recent interview that bankruptcy court was "designed" to "rehabilitate corporations" and that a labor contract should be treated like any other contract that "the company cannot live with."

But a strike, he added, "is unthinkable." The union would be "placing in jeopardy the jobs themselves."