APA Indicates Management Is Considering Concessions

Negotiators for the Allied Pilots Association and American Airlines have reportedly been meeting daily ... and making progress towards a new agreement between the pilots and the airline's management.

On its website, the APA, which represents the pilots, says that the airline's management has made a number of "encouraging" changes to their positions.

APA lists some of the moves management has made as including:

• Moving the 737-700 and the A319 into the same pay group as the S80 and 737-800.
• Improvements to the disability plan.
• Agreement to replenish a pilot’s sick bank after an injury on duty.
• Agreement that medical verification would only be required for access to a pilot’s long-term sick bank.
• Removal of hotel language that gives preference to airport hotels.
• A “home base” concept that could allow some commuters to start their sequences from airports other than the cornerstone pilot bases.
• A moratorium on closing the STL pilot base until an arbitration process has been completed
• A moratorium on closing any other pilot bases for at least a year.
• Agreeing to remove language in the bankruptcy settlement agreement restricting APA’s right to protest management compensation.

The union says decreasing the number of pay bands is a very helpful move as the two sides transition to talks on creating a methodology for the mid-contract adjustment, which "sets us up to keep up with our pilot peers at Delta and United. We continue to make progress in contract-language writing — there are many difficult issues to work through in the days ahead, but each of the past several days has proven productive at the table. Our counterparts at United have been locked up in contract-language writing for some time now, so the challenge is not unique to our situation. Our goal is for any agreement presented to you to be in full contract language."

The APA said the two sides will continue to meet daily in an effort to reach a negotiated settlement of their differences.

FMI: www.aa.com, www.alliedpilots.org