Comair to Ask Judge to Impose Concessions on Flight Attendants

Delta Air Lines Inc. subsidiary Comair said Monday that it will again ask a judge to impose contract concessions on flight attendants the airline says are vital to its bankruptcy recovery.

The company has softened its demands on its flight attendants and the two sides have made progress in negotiations in the past few weeks, Comair spokeswoman Kate Marx said.

But the sides haven't reached a tentative agreement on a new contract, and the airline will file a new motion next week asking U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Adlai Hardin to decide whether the latest Comair proposal is fair, Marx said.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents the flight attendants, is prepared to go back to court if necessary, union spokeswoman Noa Oren said.

Negotiations broke off in April, but Hardin ordered the sides back to the table in May after ruling that Comair could not impose wage and other cuts on its 970 flight attendants. The judge said his ruling would not prevent Comair from filing a second motion seeking concessions if the two sides were unable to resolve their differences.

Like its parent Delta, Comair, which has 6,400 employees and operates 850 flights daily to 108 cities, is trying to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy filed last year. The regional airline, based across the Ohio River from Cincinnati in Erlanger, Ky., has said it needs $8.9 million in wage and other cuts from the flight attendants as part of a plan to cut $42 million in annual costs.

Flight attendants had said the concessions Comair sought would cut much deeper into their wages, benefits and work rules than the concessions demanded of the airline's pilots and mechanics.

'We have greatly reduced the pay impact to our flight attendants,' Marx said Monday of the company's latest proposal.

She said the proposal would cut flight attendants' pay by 7.5 percent. Total concessions would average $3,700 in pay and benefits per flight attendant, Marx said. Average pay for flight attendants is $29,950, she said.

Comair's latest proposal also addresses union concerns over job protection, the part-time flight attendants program, out-of-pocket medical expenses and profit sharing, Marx said, adding that the union has not agreed to Comair's latest offers on those issues.

The company said the $8.9 million in wage and other cuts has changed, but Comair would not release the current figure or provide other specifics of its proposal.

The union would not provide details of its last proposal to the company but said the figures released Monday by Comair do not tell the whole story.

'Our flight attendants shouldn't be asked to shoulder more than their fair share of the burden,' Oren said.

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