UAL Urges Pilots to Back US Airways Merger

Top executives of United Airlines parent UAL Corp. met with senior pilots of the world’s largest airline and urged them to get on board for its proposed $4.3-billion takeover of US Airways. The meeting was closed to reporters, and both sides suggested no immediate breakthrough was likely in United Airline’s efforts to win over the pilots. “Whether we like the deal or not--we can’t say yet,” spokesman Herb Hunter of the United branch of the Air Line Pilots Assn. said after the two-hour meeting. “It has some possibilities, but there are some sticking points.” Securing the approval of United’s 10,000 pilots is expected to be a costly, time-consuming process for UAL Corp. and Chief Executive James Goodwin. Concerned primarily about seniority issues in merging the nation’s biggest and sixth-biggest airlines, the pilots’ representative on the board of majority employee-owned UAL, Rick Dubinsky, cast the lone dissenting vote when the proposal was approved May 23. United spokesman Joe Hopkins said that Goodwin, who was joined by two top financial executives of the airline, had volunteered to speak about the merger with the United pilots’ master executive council. Dubinsky chairs the council, which is meeting through Friday; 50 to 100 pilots attended Wednesday.