Flying Tiger Pilots’ Offer Held Rejected

Flying Tiger Line’s 650 pilots expressed interest in buying the troubled air cargo carrier during the weekend, but the company refused, a pilot negotiator said Monday.

Gary Duff, head of the negotiating committee for Tiger’s pilots union, said the pilots asked Flying Tiger’s chairman and chief executive, Stephen M. Wolf, to take the company off the market for six months so they could put together an offer. Duff said Wolf rejected the idea shortly after midnight Monday. No dollar figures were mentioned, he added.

Neither Wolf nor Lawrence Nagin, Flying Tiger’s general counsel, who also attended the meeting with pilots, could be reached for comment Monday.

Last Wednesday, Flying Tiger’s board of directors put the company up for sale after failing to reach an agreement with pilots on the company’s demand for wage and benefit concessions worth $37 million. The company said it is seeking bids on all its assets, including its fleet of 20 Boeing 747 jumbo jets and overseas landing slots.

Duff said that the pilots separately offered to meet Wolf’s demands for concessions, including a 25% pay cut and certain other benefit concessions. However, he said Wolf rejected the package because it would have required any purchaser of Flying Tiger planes or businesses to hire Flying Tiger pilots and to abide by their contract.

Flying Tiger is looking for concessions because it has been losing an average of $74,600 a day since 1981. Last year, it lost $44.2 million on sales of $1.1 billion.