Pilots at Delta Air Lines approved a new labor contract with pay raises in voting that finished Friday.
A total of 62 percent of the pilots who voted were in favor of the agreement. Of the 10,864 pilots eligible to vote, 94 percent cast ballots.
The new labor agreement between the Atlanta-based airline and the Air Line Pilots Association at Delta takes effect July 1 and continues through 2015.
The deal will give pilots pay increases of 4 percent in July, followed by another increase of 8.5 percent at the start of 2013. That would be followed by hikes of 3 percent in 2014 and in 2015, amounting to a total pay increase of nearly 20 percent.
Delta's pilots union leadership approved the tentative agreement in May before submitting it for a vote by the rank-and-file pilots.
Not all pilots were expected to be happy with the deal because some expected much larger pay increases to recover from significant cutbacks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and during Delta's bankruptcy from 2005 to 2007.
A key component of the pilots deal is that it allows Delta to lease all 88 of Southwest Airlines' Boeing 717 planes. Dallas-based Southwest inherited the 717s from AirTran Airways when it acquired AirTran last year.
That, in turn, would allow Delta to remove from its fleet hundreds of regional jets flown by Delta Connection contract carriers, according to a summary of the deal from the pilots union.
Delta and AirTran are the two largest carriers at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Southwest entered the Atlanta market in February and is gradually folding AirTran's operations into its own over the next couple of years.
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