Margin Was Not Overwhelming, With 58 Percent Of Those Voting Favoring The New Pact

Pilots at Mesa Airlines, represented by the Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA), have ratified a new four-year agreement with their management. Of the 761 pilots who voted, 58 percent cast ballots in favor of the agreement.

“We are pleased with today’s results,” said Capt. Andy Hughes, chairman of the ALPA Mesa pilots Master Executive Council. “This tentative agreement delivers improvements in pay, vacation, and retirement, placing us in line with the rest of our peers and that’s what pattern bargaining is all about.”

The amended contract provides all pilots with across-the-board pay increases, higher pay for deadheading, and the elimination of “base pay,” which significantly increases each pilot’s annual earnings.  The agreement also contains much-needed improvements to pilot scheduling, including reserve pilots, and selection of hotels, along with numerous other improvements. In addition, the agreement includes a process to begin negotiations six months before the amendable date, the assistance of a private mediator before relying on the services provided by the National Mediation Board (NMB), and 1% pay increases during that bargaining process.

“I want to congratulate the Mesa bargaining team and the pilot group’s leadership for achieving much-needed improvements in the cornerstone areas of their contract,” said Capt. Tim Canoll, ALPA president. “Under their leadership, this group emerged from mediated negotiations with the pay increases our pilots demanded and have long deserved.”

The ratification of this agreement represents more than six years of direct contract negotiations with the company, including three months at the bargaining table with the assistance of the NMB.

“The results are a testament to the strength of collaborative negotiations, as opposed to prior efforts where the atmosphere at the table was markedly different,” said Hughes. “This new contract furthers our mutual goal of providing the highest level of service to our mainline partners and our customers.”
 
“We call on Mesa’s senior management team to continue working with us as they did in concluding this negotiation by properly implementing, managing, and adhering to this new agreement,” added Hughes.

Mesa Airlines operates as American Eagle from hubs in Phoenix and Dallas/Fort Worth and as United Express from Washington Dulles and Houston. Mesa pilots operate 134 aircraft, with more than 600 daily system departures to 124 cities, 38 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas. The airline will add 10 additional Embraer 175 aircraft to its fleet later this year.

(Source: ALPA news release. Image from file)

FMOI: www.alpa.org