American Airlines pilots have likely secured a labor contract following the carrier’s decision to sweeten the deal, pending union members’ approval.
The Allied Pilots Association (APA), which represents American Airlines’ 15,000 pilots, postponed a scheduled vote on a previous agreement after the Fort Worth-based carrier agreed to improve its offer by approximately $1 billion, boosting the total value of the four-year contract to $9 billion and placing the proposed deal on par with a tentative agreement reached between United and its pilots last week.
While APA had been scheduled to vote on the previous agreement on Monday, the union’s leadership opted for extra time at the bargaining table to determine “whether management’s comprehensive proposal is worthy of a membership vote,” according to APA President Ed Sicher, The Dallas Morning News reported.
“I’m really proud of the agreement our negotiating committees reached … but the United deal changed the landscape,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom told pilots on Friday, per DMN.
As part of United’s preliminary deal with pilots, the Chicago-based airline is offering roughly 2% higher wages, additional retroactive pay, and other benefits — each of which surpassed the initial offer made by American Airlines.
Following the mass exodus of pilots during the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous pilots’ unions began asking for higher pay, better work conditions, and improvements to scheduling, among other quality-of-life demands.
In March, Delta Airlines pilots agreed to a new deal that included a 34% pay increase over the contract’s life and enhancements related to schedules, vacations, and benefits.
“We saw a market standard set for work-life balance and quality of life that we had not seen set before,” said APA Communications Chair Dennis Tajer, per DMN. “United had gone and collected the good things from the Delta contract, some of the good things in our tentative agreement, and then they built on them.”
Although American Airlines sweetened the offer by $1 billion, a membership vote for the new contract has not yet been scheduled. However, on Sunday, the APA’s leadership board adopted a motion to begin voting “at a date and time to be determined,” Bloomberg Law reported.
The Dallas Express reached out to Tajer for comment about the revised contract’s potential for approval but did not hear back by the time of publishing.