MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Pilots and flight attendants of Mexican airline Aeromar will hold off on a possible strike despite being owed hundreds of thousands of dollars, their unions said Tuesday, hours before a deadline to achieve an agreement with the corporate was set to run out.
It was a positive sign for the 35-year-old regional airline after the Mexico City International Airport on Friday confiscated two of Aeromar’s hangars following its “refusal to comply with payment obligations” of some 500 million pesos ($26.7 million), based on the airport.
Flight attendants union ASSA said it had chosen to carry off on the strike “for the sake of safeguarding the corporate once more”.
Aeromar met with airport officials Monday to present a payment plan, Mexico’s transportation ministry said, adding that its operations at Mexico City continued to operate normally.
The carrier, which operates 10 ATR turboprop planes, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Aeromar’s plight has attracted attention from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who can be working to revive the brand of defunct carrier Mexicana to launch a military-run industrial airline.
He said in October that the federal government was willing to assist Aeromar to repay debts owed to the country’s tax authority and to its employees in installments.
Several of the corporate’s executives met with the flight attendants’ union on Monday, the union said, and discussed the corporate’s financial situation in addition to the “potential” entrance of an investor.
The airline’s crew members voted to not strike in separate assemblies on Monday, their unions said, as an alternative extending a deadline to achieve an agreement with the corporate to May 12.
“We proceed to demand (Aeromar) pay its debts owed to pilots,” union leader Jose Humberto Gual said in a press release.
($1 = 18.6965 Mexican pesos)
(Reporting by Kylie Madry; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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