Southwest Airlines and Its Pilots Say They’ve Agreed to New Contract Terms

Southwest Airlines pilots have reached an “agreement in principle” on a new contract after more than three years of negotiations.

“We are finally at a place where we think the value of our pilots and their productivity is being realized,” Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA), said Tuesday in a statement.

The union and airline declined to reveal any terms of the agreement.

Murray told CNBC on Tuesday that the new five-year contract would be worth about $12 billion. American Airlines pilots said their new contract, approved by the pilots in August, amounts to $9.6 billion in pay and benefits increases over four years. Likewise, United pilots valued their four-year contract, ratified a month later, at more than $10 billion.

Southwest’s 11,000 pilots will vote on the deal if the union’s board of directors approves it this week and will then send it to the membership for ratification.

The airline called the agreement “a key milestone in the process” and said it looks forward to the next steps. Dallas-based Southwest is the last of the large U.S. carriers without a new pilot contract.

The company is also trying to reach a new deal with its flight attendants, who on Dec. 8 resoundingly rejected a tentative agreement in a vote their union leadership says was marred by technical glitches. The Transport Workers Union Local 556 said Dec.14 that it will hold a new vote on the deal.