FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- American Airlines and its pilots are continuing negotiations in an attempt to break their stalemate over the carrier's recent acquisition of Reno Air.
Talks between the carrier and the Allied Pilots Association, joined by a private mediator, began Sunday at a resort outside Washington, D.C.The impasse led pilots to stage a sickout last month that caused the cancellation of more than 6,600 flights. At issue is combining 300 Reno Air pilots into American's 9,300-member pilots corps.
The carrier and its pilots had agreed to mediation if two more bargaining sessions failed to break their stalemate.
However, the parties agreed to cancel those face-to-face sessions because they believed that both sides were too entrenched to achieve progress without the help of a mediator.
The 11-day sickout by up to 2,500 APA members forced American to cancel nearly 6,700 flights, inconveniencing 670,000 people.
The mediator is George Nicolau, a former president of the National Academy of Arbitrators who has handled arbitration for Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.
The airline wants to gradually bump Reno pilots up to the American pilot scale, after they are trained as American pilots and assigned to fly American jets. It says that that has been the industry's standard policy for handling pilot integrations throughout its history.