Mesa Air Group Inc., parent of interisland carrier go!,said yesterday it has reached a tentative deal with its pilots after 10 months of negotiations.

Mesa Chairman and Chief Executive Jonathan Ornstein also said in an interview that the company is furloughing about 250 employees, or 6 percent of its work force, although go! operations will not be affected. The carrier has about 4,100 employees.

The cutbacks come in the wake of a cancellation in August by Delta Air Lines Inc. for Mesa's operation of CRJ900 aircraft under the Delta Connection name as well as the shutdown in late April of its Air Midwest operations with 19-seat Beech 1900 aircraft.

Phoenix-based Mesa's Freedom segment operated seven regional jets for Delta Connection, with a further seven aircraft formerly scheduled to enter service by May 2009. Mesa subleased the aircraft from Delta for $1 a month per plane.

“;Pilot attrition has decreased so significantly that a lot of the people furloughed were pilots who were in training or just coming through training,”; Ornstein said. “;We also had a lot of overhead reductions because the company is going to be smaller because a lot of our partners are going to reduce flying.”;

The airline is also facing higher operating and maintenance costs, Ornstein said. Mesa went from about $1 billion in revenue in 2005 to $1.5 billion in revenue in 2008, he said, with an estimate for 2009 of $1.3 billion.

“;Mesa has been in business for 27 years - we have had two furloughs in our history,”; he said. “;It is something we have done very, very rarely.”;

He said he expects many of the furloughed workers to be rehired, similar to employees who were furloughed by the company after 9/11 and were called back in eight or nine months.

If ratified, the tentative union contract with the Air Line Pilots Association International will resolve many of the scheduling-related issues between Mesa and the group, as well as other benefits for investors and passengers, the company said in a statement.

“;This contract represents a new beginning for our pilots and our company,”; Captain Kevin Wilson, chairman of the ALPA unit at Mesa, said in the statement. “;To be a successful, viable company in today's challenging marketplace, we recognized that we must put aside our differences and develop real-world solutions benefiting both the pilots and the company.”;

The contract became amendable in September 2007. An expedited negotiation process resulted in a short-term agreement with improvements in scheduling, including more days off, a true definition of scheduled or actual, and the implementation of a system that will allow the pilots to have more control over their schedules. Details were not released.

Pilots are expected to begin voting in mid-November, with results announced later that month. ALPA represents nearly 1,200 pilots at Mesa.

  The union representing interisland rival Hawaiian Airlines' more than 400 pilots said last month it is seeking mediation from a national labor board on contract negotiations that have lasted more than a year and a half.