Just two days after flight attendants at American Airlines Group Inc. narrowly rejected a proposed new contract, the company made a proposal to its pilots, promising the highest pay rates among the carrier’s big rivals, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Allied Pilots Association, the bargaining agent for about 10,000 American pilots and 5,000 US Airways aviators, said its 22-member board of directors is scheduled to meet for three days this week to evaluate the offer. The union board could accept the offer, ask for more time to bargain, or put the deal out to a membership vote. A spokesman for the union said he couldn’t comment on what would occur if management’s offer is voted down, either at the board level or by the entire group. The airline’s combined 24,000 flight attendants shot down — by a scant 16 votes — a five-year contract that would have raised their pay to the top of the industry scale. By previous agreement, American and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants union will take part in arbitration, with a three-member panel working to apportion the value of contract improvements that are capped at $111 million a year over existing, separate labor agreements, bringing them to the average of what attendants at Delta Air Lines Inc. and the still-separate Continental and United subsidiaries of United Continental Holdings Inc. receive. The rejected deal would have provided $193 million more in annual value.
