Release #05.ATA8
September 19, 2005

ALPA ATA Leadership Sends Three-Year, $84 Million Tentative Agreement to Members

CHICAGO - The leadership representing the pilots and flight engineers of ATA Airlines has voted to send a tentative agreement to its members for possible ratification. The tentative agreement would replace the flight crewmembers' existing contract and reduce their pay and benefits for the next three years to help save their bankrupt airline.

The ATA Airlines Master Executive Council of the Air Line Pilots Association, International, agreed Saturday to schedule a ratification vote to conclude before Sept. 30. More than 800 ATA pilots and flight engineers are represented by ALPA.

If approved, it would be the fourth time in 15 months that crewmembers have sacrificed to help the company. ATA crewmembers will have given up $66 million in concessions by the end of this year, and if ratified the new concessions package would cost crewmembers an additional $84 million by the end of 2007.

ATA management has asked the federal bankruptcy court to throw out their existing collective bargaining agreement with ALPA and replace it with the company's own contract terms. The proposed tentative agreement would give crewmembers slightly higher pay, better work rules and fewer cuts in health and retirement benefits than the plan ATA has submitted to the bankruptcy court. It would also give crewmembers equity in the airline once it emerges from Chapter 11 protection by giving the crewmember group a four percent share of ATA in the form of stock options.

Founded in 1931, ALPA is the world's largest pilot union, representing more than 64,000 cockpit crewmembers at 41 airlines in the U.S. and Canada. Visit the ALPA website at www.alpa.org.

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ALPA Contact: Rusty Ayers, 773-284-4910, 847-323-9519 (cell)