AirCal Pilots Sign 4-Year Contract : Two-Tier Clause Reduces Pay Scale for Future Hires

Capping five months of negotiations, Air Line Pilots Assn. International signed a new contract Friday for AirCal pilots that features a controversial two-tier wage scale clause. That clause grants the current pilots of the Newport Beach-based airline a modest pay raise while establishing a lower pay scale for pilots that AirCal hires in the future.

The new four-year contract, replacing an agreement that expired in November, is designed to help the regional airline implement its expansion plans and compete with low-cost commuter airlines that have been entering the market since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. That act removed federal controls on airline routes and fares.

“AirCal pilots have once again shown their willingness to work hand-in-hand with management in an effort to keep our airline competitive in a deregulated environment,” Don Wharton, chairman of the AirCal pilot group’s master executive council, said in a prepared statement.

A key feature of the contract sets up the two-tier pay scale for AirCal pilots. According the Airline Pilots Assn., the 350 pilots currently employed by AirCal will receive “modest pay increases in each of the four years of the contract, as well as various work rule improvements.”

Pilots to Hear Details

AirCal officials refused to disclose the exact amount of the pay raises and nature of the work rule changes until details of the agreement are presented to the pilots themselves.

According to the pilot association, any pilots hired subsequent to Friday’s contract signing will receive lower pay for their first five years of employment, after which their salaries will be increased to the level of senior pilots. Pilot association spokesman Rocky Wilkinson said that similar two-tier wage systems have been adopted by a number of the country’s larger airlines, including United, American and U.S. Air.

AirCal President David A. Banmiller said that the new contract “has positioned us to let us grow and do it more efficiently.” He said that over the next three months AirCal will hire between 50 and 70 pilots at the new reduced wage scale in order to carry out its plan to add more jets at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport and to inaugurate service into Alaska.

Banmiller said that the airline expects to have no difficulty finding qualified pilots to work for lower pay because, he said, AirCal is “a very attractive carrier in an attractive part of the country.”