Delta pilots reach tentative agreement
WASHINGTON (AP) - Delta Air Lines reached a new contract with its pilots, averting a strike at the nation's third-largest airline in a deal that could make the carrier's pilots the highest-paid in the industry.
The pact, reached Sunday, came a week before Delta's 9,800 pilots had threatened to leave their cockpits.
The Air Line Pilots Association said the contract included pay increases of 24 percent to 34 percent for Delta pilots between now and 2005 and pay increases of 63 percent by 2005 for pilots at Delta Express, the carrier's lower-cost unit. The tentative four-year contract exceeds the current most lucrative contract at United Airlines, the nation's biggest airline.
The contract was reached after five days of talks with the National Mediation Board. It also includes improvements in retirement, job security and vacation benefits, union officials said.
"We are pleased that we were able to achieve a collective agreement through the collective-bargaining process and without government intervention," Charles Giambusso, chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association's chapter at Delta, said
"This agreement will make Delta pilots the best paid in the industry and will provide other industry-leading improvements," Delta (DAL: Research, Estimates) Chairman Leo Mullin said in a statement Sunday.
Under the existing contract, a pilot at Delta with 10 years of seniority and flying the carrier's smallest jet, makes $157,152 a year, according to Air Inc., an Atlanta-based pilot counseling firm.
A Delta spokesman said the company would not discuss details of the agreement until Monday. Union leaders were scheduled to meet Saturday to consider the contract, with members expected to vote on it by July.
Gregg Holm, a union spokesman and Delta pilot, said the contract would make up for concessions pilots made in 1996, when the Atlanta-based airline was emerging from several years of financial losses.
"This gives the pilots pretty much what they were looking for," Holm said. "I think this is going to go a long way toward repairing the rift that was caused by the 1996 contract."
The agreement comes at a key time for Delta, which has been losing $3 million a day from a pilots' strike at its Comair regional carrier.
The industry also faces labor unrest. Earlier this month, Northwest Airlines reached a tentative deal with its 9,400 mechanics, and American has been haggling with flight attendants on a new contract. Texas-based American also faces labor uncertainty as it attempts to merge workers from Trans World Airlines, which it acquired this month.
United also faces contract issues with its mechanics.
Delta pilots had sought a deal to surpass the generous contract United Air Lines and its pilots ratified last year, making "United Plus" a slogan for the talks. The proposed Delta contract provides wage and benefit hikes that are about 1 percent higher than United's. ALPA was seeking gains of 4 percent to 5 percent beyond the United contract, a source familiar with the negotiations said.
If approved, the contract would end a 19-month process that included a work slowdown by pilots and the company's successful pursuit of an injunction.
Before the deal, Delta had been lobbying vigorously for the White House to appoint a presidential emergency board to study the dispute. Under the Railway Labor Act, which governs airline and railroad labor contracts, a presidential emergency board can be appointed to study the situation and recommend a contract.
The appointment of a board would automatically put any job action on hold for 60 days, after which the pilots could strike unless Congress acts to mandate a contract. President Bush has pledged to block strikes at major airlines this year with such boards.
Mary Godwin, a traveler from Orlando, Fla., who was at Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport Sunday night, said Bush would have been forced to enter the fray if no deal had been struck. "I understand the right to have a strike, but look at all the lives it would have affected," she said.
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Have the Delta pilots been successful in their goal of "restoring the profession"?
Looking forward to details as they become known.
Thanks to all.