Something Special On The Ground?

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WASHINGTON, D.C.: A strike of American Airlines pilots appears more and more likely as company and pilots' union representatives resume negotiations seeking a new contract before a deadline of midnight EST Friday. The union, the Allied Pilots Association, has established a strike "war room" in Miami, while the airline has alerted its 90,000 employees that a layoff may be coming. "There's a lot of distrust on both sides," says TIME Austin bureau chief Sam Gwynne. "The central truth at this point is that the two sides can't even agree on the major issue. The management says this strike is about money; the pilots say it's about the emergence of regional jets." This contract will effectively lay the ground rules for how American will handle the new regional jets -- fast, efficient 50-seaters with ranges up to 3,000 miles and a smooth ride. The union wants its pilots, who make about $120,000 a year, behind the controls of the planes, but American chairman Robert Crandall wants to use $35,000-a-year American Eagle pilots. "This plane makes a route such as Pocatello, Idaho to Dallas profitable," says Gwynne. "They're ideal for so-called 'long-thin' routes." Gwynne says some analysts believe that hundreds of the new planes may be in the air in the next few years, taking traffic away from the big-city hubs and jobs away from the pilots who fly there. American management is pushing the pilots to accept binding arbitration, but that process could take two years and the union calls it a delay tactic. Working now on a contract negotiated when American was in poor financial shape, the pilots haven't had a raise since 1993, and demand an 11-percent raise over four years. Crandall, fearing another downturn in the cyclical airline business, feels that giving too much now may cost the airline dearly later. But a strike could cost more -- the airline stands to lose more in the first week than it stands to gain by winning the contract dispute. In any event, industry analysts don't expect a walkout to last more than 60 days. Hanging over both sides is the memory of the bitter pilots' strike that brought down Eastern Airlines less than a decade ago.