WASHINGTON - President Clinton yesterday urged American Airlines Inc. and its pilots union to settle their contract dispute, but declined to intervene in the matter before tomorrow night's strike deadline, despite entreaties from congressional leaders from several affected states.
As negotiators for both sides reported little progress yesterday in their agreement to reach a new contract, American announced it had canceled about 129 round-trip, long-haul foreign flights beginning tomorrow, to avoid stranding crews and aircraft abroad.
Cancellations will affect mostly flights to South America, Japan and Europe. Flights to London will leave as scheduled tomorrow.
American, which carries one out of every five air passengers in the United States, has said it will shut down its entire worldwide operation if members of the Allied Pilots Association strike at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
A strike would hit the airline at the start of the Presidents' Day holiday weekend, the nation's second-biggest air travel holiday of the year.
Members of the Senate aviation subcommittee have unanimously urged Clinton to intervene by appointing a special Presidential Emergency Board that would automatically force a 60-day cooling-off period. One American official said yesterday the company would prefer the president to ask both sides to submit the dispute to arbitration rather than appoint an emergency board.
But White House aides said Clinton is loathe to get involved.
"This issue has huge implications for our country and in particular for specific parts of our country," Clinton told reporters during an event on improving aviation safety.
"I have been following it very closely. Today I want to say that the time has not expired and I want to encourage the parties to make maximum use of the mediation-board process," he said.
Clinton's language seemed to track the provisions of the law, which mandates that he determine that a strike would pose "a substantial economic threat" to deprive a region of a "central transportation service" to intervene.
During a meeting with White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles yesterday, several senators pushed for the president to step in more quickly, noting that waiting until the deadline expires would set off a chain reaction that would scramble flights across the country, no matter how quickly the matter could be settled at that point.
APA has been demanding an 11 percent increase in base pay over the four-year length of the proposed contract. American's latest offer leaves the company's base-pay increase at 6 percent. The 9,200 APA pilots at American earn an average of $120,000 a year.
The two sides are still reported to be far apart over the question of who flies the new commuter jets American wants to buy.