American Airlines (AAL) agreed to raise its pilot contract offer by more than a billion dollars to bring it on par with the tentative agreement competitor United Airlines reached with its pilots last week.
The total offer reaches about $9 billion dollars in incremental compensation and benefits, CEO Robert Isom said in a call with pilots Friday. It will include a pay raise for pilots and a ratification bonus.
Isom said the United agreement “changed the landscape” and had wages that were higher than Delta’s original negotiations.
“The wages and retro pay matched the best in the industry — which, at the time, was Delta,” Isom said. “And the TA includes significant unique quality-of-life provisions critically important to American’s pilots.”
Isom said the goal is to reach an August ratification.
But in a statement, the Allied Pilots Association board of directors said Isom’s announcement gave an “offer that included the least critical elements prioritized by the Board and was riddled with contingencies that would justifiably fail to pass muster with our members.”
They said the offer still lags behind the industry and contains items that have “already been established as the minimum standard for pilots at our peer airlines.” The union said they will have a counterproposal.
Last week, United Airlines pilots, represented by the Air Line Pilots Association, reached a deal in principle with the airline, giving the pilots up to a 40% raise. The deal has about $10 billion in value over the life of the contract, the union said, with improvements to “quality of work-life, compensation, job security, work rules, retirement, benefits.”
American Airlines pilots pushed back after the announcement.
Last week, APA President Ed Sicher said in a statement it is “dead obvious” their union’s existing tentative agreement is “woefully deficient by comparison” to the tentative agreement reached by its competitor airline’s pilots.
