Airline Head Joining Talks to Avert Pilot Strike

The head of Comair will join contract talks between the regional airline and its pilots union in hopes of heading off a strike early Monday.

Comair said it will decide this afternoon whether to cancel most of Monday’s flight schedule.

Comair President Randy Rademacher said Saturday that he was heading to Washington to join talks with federal mediators and negotiators for Comair and the Air Line Pilots Assn.

Rademacher noted that Magdalena Jacobsen, a National Mediation Board member, joined the talks Saturday after negotiators spent Friday with mediation staff trying to reach an agreement.

“We have the people in Washington right now who can make a deal,” Rademacher said.

He would not say how close the sides were.

Rademacher said Comair will decide by 3 p.m. today whether to cancel flights from 12:01 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to give passengers time to arrange flights on other airlines. That would amount to canceling 740 of the airline’s 815 daily departures in a system that serves about 25,000 passengers daily.

Comair, the nation’s second-largest regional carrier, canceled at least 7% of its daily flight schedule Thursday and increased that for Saturday and today to 13%, or about 100 departures per day.

An offer that Comair pilots rejected Monday would have given the pilots a company-funded retirement program, which was extended last year to Comair’s other employees. It also would have increased the annual pay of top-scale pilots from $66,000 to $96,000. That would have been the best pay offered to any pilots in the regional airline industry, Comair management said.

Comair’s pilots say they want the retirement plan, more rest time between flights, higher pay and the right to be paid for all hours they are on the job, not just flying hours.

Comair, which is owned by Delta Air Lines, also has a hub in Orlando, Fla. The airline serves 95 cities in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas.