American announced this afternoon that it had reached an agreement with its pilots union.
The Dallas News Aviation Blog writes that the document which was agreed to was a ‘comprehensive counter proposal’ prepared by the pilots union itself.
As a document that the union put forward, one imagines that the union members will vote to ratify it. But the last time a contract was forwarded by the union to the pilots, the pilots rejected it.
I wrote on Monday that an agreement was close but that the union was apparently worried about putting it forward, probably worried for their jobs since they’re the ones who ousted the previous union leadership after it had failed to get the membership to ratify a contract.
So nothing is done until it’s done. Still, I suspect the pilots realize at this point that the deal they’re being offered is as good as it could possibly get. So they will ratify.
Which will mean both that American’s union groups are now under new contracts post-bankruptcy, which should make it easier for the airline to exit chapter 11 in the coming months, and also that there should be a modicum of labor peace such that operations won’t be disrupted by any more labor actions as happened during September (when there were significant cancellations and a poor 58% on-time rating; the airline’s performance has since recovered markedly).
Hopefully it’s almost back to business as usual.
Yeah! Now if they can just avoid the US merger. US can always acquire VX, unless of course AA does.
So we should see a change in the AAdvantage program next year. Probably making it worse.
@Zz – what’s the argument behind that?
@Zz – I can’t imagine AA making any significant changes in AAdvantage in the near future. While they’re in/coming out of bankruptcy, they’d be insane to do anything that would run the risk of angering their FFers (at least to the point they’d consider switching airlines). And when you add the pilot caused flight disruptions into that equation… I mean, nobody could possibly be that stupid. I can see them changing things, but not for the near term.
@Gene – I’m with you there! I wouldn’t mind if they merged with US, but I don’t want Dougie and his cronies running it if they do, and if that were to be the case, Dougie would likely walk away.