The company says it needs $305 million in concessions from the pilots. That would result in an 18 percent pay cut for the average pilot, who makes between $150,000 and $160,000 a year.

The 6,000 pilots have offered to take a cut of $140 million. So far, the company and the pilots have been unable to agree on how to bridge the $165 million gap that divides them. But, given what's at stake, both sides have a huge incentive to reach an agreement.

If they don't, and an arbitration panel rules at week's end that the airline can void its contract with the pilots to keep its reorganization plan afloat, the pilots say they will strike.

The airline's CEO says a strike would likely cause lenders who have financed Delta's $2 billion reorganization plan to call their loans, and that would be the end of Delta.

The pilots argue they already have sacrificed the 34 percent pay raises their contract gave them between 2002 and 2004. They gave most of that up in late 2004 when they agreed to a 32.5 percent reduction.

But others in the company have made big concessions, too. The airlines' non-pilot employees took cuts of 12 percent in 2002, and they gave up another 9-15 percent last fall. By some measures, the non-pilots, who are paid less, have lost more ground since 1990 than the pilots.

Delta CEO Jerry Grinstein gave up 35 percent of his base pay. Other executives have taken 25 percent cuts. Many people across the company, from management down, have lost their jobs.

Utahns have a stake in this drama, because Delta's Salt Lake City hub employs about 3,700 people, including 600 pilots. The loss of the airline would be a body blow to the state's economy, to say nothing of the human hardship it would cause.

Delta's management and the pilots understand that, of course. They can't control fuel prices and competition from low-cost carriers. What they can do is reach a compromise that will save a once-great company and its people's jobs.