A pilot speaks on a mobile device near a Delta Air Lines gate at Salt Lake City International Airport.
George Frey | Bloomberg | fake pictures
Delta Air Lines is seeking to lower the guaranteed minimum wage for pilots, a proposal an airline executive said on Friday that it could avoid permits for a year as the threat of job cuts and a rapid recovery in flights looms. Air travel becomes increasingly remote due to new cases of coronavirus.
More than 60,000 airline employees at various airlines have been warned this month that their jobs are at risk, including more than 2,500 of Delta’s more than 14,000 pilots, when billions of dollars in support of federal payroll They expire on October 1.
Delta and other airlines are urging employees to take early retirements, purchases and other forms of leave to lower costs as financial losses accumulate. More than 1,700 pilots have signed up for early retirements, according to a memo from John Laughter, Delta’s senior vice president of flight operations, which was reviewed by CNBC.
The Atlanta-based airline proposes that the pilots union agree to reduce the pilots’ guaranteed minimum wage by 15%, according to the memo.
“Our focus is to spread the work of a smaller airline among all of our pilots to preserve all jobs, that would be unheard of in our history,” Laughter wrote. “But we cannot do it only with voluntary options like [voluntary early out programs] and paid sheets. This has been demonstrated to our competitors with WARN notices issued even with paid licenses offered. “
The Airline Pilots Association, which represents Delta pilots, did not immediately comment.
Allowing pilots is a gamble for airlines, which don’t want to run a deficit if demand for travel recovers. Pilot cuts can mean costly and time consuming training in the future.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian said this week that more than 17,000 of the airline’s approximately 90,000 employees have signed up for purchases or early retirement programs, and thousands more have signed up for temporary permits.
He warned that the airline “unfortunately still has too many personnel in some areas of the business.”
“But we are committed to exhausting all possible options and harnessing our creativity before considering involuntary separations,” he said Thursday in a staff memo. “We are investigating all staffing opportunities, including temporary transfer of people across divisions, contracting work previously done by contractors, and continuing our work hours reductions as needed to share work across the company.” .
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