American Airlines has a tentative agreement with its pilots, but the new contract hasn’t been submitted to pilots for a vote yet. In the meantime United Airlines agreed to a deal with its pilots that offers even higher pay. (United pilots had previously come to a deal, that their members rejected, and Delta set a new pay bar with their pilots.)

Pilots at American saw what United did and that would likely have doomed the deal. American Airlines is lagging financially which makes it harder to pay equivalent rates, but pilots can shut down an airline and striking pilots aren’t replaceable over the short- or even medium-term.

After the American Airlines second quarter earnings call, executives held an internal “State of the Airline” meeting, a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing.

A pilot submitted a question, asking about CEO Robert Isom’s comments that the airline ‘planned to match the United deal’ and asked whether this was correct? Isom offered that they’ll match pay rates and retro pay – though it’s something that could happen “soon” or “over a longer period of time.”

Well, okay, we did a question this morning. A lot has happened over the course of last week. First I want to say this. It’s been my goal, and my responsibility, to make sure that we take care of our team members. And we’ve been consistent throughout in saying we’re going to take care of our team members and make sure they’re paid, and paid well, and paid competitively.

We had a tentative agreement with our pilots. And that tentative agreement, you know we were hoping to get out for a vote. United came on top of that wiht another tentative agreement. The tentative agreement we had I think did very well at hitting our objectives of matching the best in the business, Delta at the time. United has come in, it’s not a ratified deal yet.

I will tell you, in terms of our commitment, it hasn’t changed. So in regard to United TA, this morning I said we would match those United wages, and by wages I do mean that we will match those wages going forward and also in regard to how they impact retro pay too. So you have my commitment on that front. I can’t wait to sit down with our pilots. Hopefully keep things on track. But no matter what, whether we get something done soon, or we get something done over a longer period of time the commitment holds that we’re going to make sure that we have a deal that really takes care of our pilots and makes them feel great about our jobs.

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom’s caveat that updating the contract could come quickly – or it might not – was clearly intentional. It won’t be a matter of just substituting in new, higher pay rates. This suggests they’re going to be negotiating and re-negotiating other language in the deal as well.