Grounded

At 4:30 one morning last week, the American Overseas Airlines dispatcher at LaGuardia Field telephoned Ferry Pilot Captain John Taylor at his home. Taylor had been alerted 72 hours before to pick up Washington passengers for a flight to Germany, but hadn't shown up. "Where the hell are you," said the dispatcher. Said Captain Taylor sleepily: "You better call Flushing 3-0163." The dispatcher dialed the number, found himself talking to the A.F.L. Air Line Pilots Association. Said the union: "There's a strike on."

That was the first news American Overseas got that its 173 captains and copilots had walked out, grounding all the 18 planes on its international routes. As the day wore on, American found space on rival lines for 56 passengers on the relatively light eastbound run. But 130 others waited vainly at European airports, unable to find space on the crowded westbound flights of other lines. (By week's end A.O.A.'s European backlog was close to 1,000.)

The strike was not over pay. The airline and union had already agreed to a new scale (a minimum guarantee of $939 a month for first-year DC-4 captains, up to $1,308 for Constellation senior captains). American termed the scale "the highest in the history of international commercial transport flying." David L. Behncke, the hard-bargaining president of the A.L.P.A., said the strike was caused by a last-minute demand of the airline. A.O.A. would agree to sign the contract, said Behncke, only if the union waived pilot grievances.

The main grievance concerned the time a pilot had to put in on "standby" duty apart from regular flying time. Actually, the grievance was a minor point. The union's chief complaint was that A.O.A. had not given its bargaining agents enough authority to come to terms, that company officials were "stalling." After bargaining for 20 months, the union had voted in August to strike if agreement was not soon reached. American Overseas replied that Behncke had walked out on the negotiations and that it would not negotiate until the pilots went back to work. To back up these words, American Overseas prepared to lay off most of its 2,081 other U.S. employees, and began dickering to lease its idle planes to other airlines.

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