Commercial pilots associated with Delta Air Lines have officially approved a working agreement with the company as of last week which will provide a substantial 34% pay increase.
This agreement is expected to cost Delta somewhere in the ballpark of $7 billion over the course of four years as roughly 15,000 pilots are expected to see benefits coming from the deal. Close to 78% of pilots for Delta elected to vote in favor of the new agreement, which would also provide staffers with additional benefits and vacation time.
“This industry-leading contract is the direct result of the Delta pilots’ unity and resolve,” explained Captain Darren Hartmann, the Delta Master Executive Council Chair, via a release. “Despite a two-year delay in negotiations due to COVID, we never lost sight of our goal to obtain significant across-the-board enhancements to our pilot working agreement.”
This new deal is slated to set the industry standards for American regarding rival carriers such as American Airlines and United Airlines. Currently, North America is the only region dealing with a shortage of pilots because of the fact that the aviation sectors for both Europe and Asia have not been able to completely bounce back from lockdown mandates.
Currently, U.S. carriers are sitting at a deficit of close to 12,000 pilots, despite the fact that close to 14,000 are being forced to leave the workforce over the course of the next five years due to new federal law which will mandate that they retire by the age of 65 years old, as reported by a study made public by the Oliver Wyman consulting group.
A number of airlines previously encouraged their pilots to retire due to the drop in flight demand back in the spring of 2020 near the inception of the pandemic. For example, Delta pushed a group of roughly 2,000 pilots to leave the company. Executives have since taken strides to decrease the level of training and the requirement for a four-year degree, set up new signing bonuses and increased the level of pay in response to the shortage of pilots.
“While we feel as strongly as ever about the importance of education, there are highly qualified candidates, people who we would want to welcome to our Delta family, who have gained more than the equivalent of a college education through years of life and leadership experience,” stated the company in a release last year.
The increases in the cost of fuel and a shortage of pilots have been a primary factor in the rising cost of airfare in the United States: ticket prices have spices by close to 26% year-over-year, as reported by data released from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The national average airfare throughout the second quarter of 2022 was roughly $397, which marks the highest level recorded in close to eight years, as reported by a separate analysis from SmartAsset.
