Delta Air Lines Inc. said it will cut pay 10% for executives and most other employees and raise their health-care payments to help reduce costs and avoid filing for bankruptcy protection.

Separately, 90% of its pilots voted in favor of an agreement that lets Atlanta based Delta keep some retired pilots on the job, reducing the threat that a crew shortage next month will force the airline to ground planes and cut flights.

Delta, the third-largest American airline, also will offer buyouts to reduce the number of job cuts, which the carrier said September 8 may be as many as 7,000. Delta’s chief executive, Gerald Grinstein, said that there would be “significant” pay cuts for remaining workers. The pay and benefit changes announced yesterday begin January 1.

“We have a small window of opportunity available to us to avoid Chapter 11 that some other carriers do not have,” Mr. Grinstein told workers in a statement yesterday. The chief executive also said he won’t be paid for the rest of this year.

Delta shares rose 40 cents, or 14%, to $3.34 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They have declined 72% this year.

Delta spokesman Anthony Black said he didn’t know how many employees will be affected by the pay and benefit reductions, which apply to nonunion workers. The carrier’s 7,500 pilots are the only major union group at Delta. The company had 70,300 workers at the end of June, down 16% from 84,000 three years earlier. The change in employee health-care payments will raise the average worker contribution to about 22%, Mr. Black said. He declined to say how much they now pay on average.

Delta will eliminate a health-care subsidy for retirees 65 years old or older who leave the company after January 1, 2006.The airline also is reducing the maximum annual vacation time to five weeks from six.

The pilots’ ratification on letting retirees remain on the job follows an agreement reached by union leaders September 20, after Mr. Grinstein said a surge in retirements next month by pilots eager to preserve pension benefits might cause a crew shortage. Captains who retire October 1 or later are eligible to keep flying.

The agreement says the company won’t file to terminate the pilots’ pension plan before February 1, even if Delta seeks bankruptcy protection. The pilots are concerned that Delta might try to terminate the plan if it seeks bankruptcy, as US Airways Group Inc. did last year and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines has threatened to do. Delta has been seeking concessions from its pilots union since April 2003 and in May of this year said it might have to seek bankruptcy protection without the givebacks. In July, Delta boosted its request to $1 billion in pay and benefit concessions, including changes to the pilots’ pension plan.

Negotiations on those concessions are expected to resume this week, the union said in a statement.

Delta froze wages this year for about two-thirds of workers, including flight attendants, reservation agents, and administrative workers, and most of those employees also didn’t get pay raises in 2002. The carrier reduced retirement benefits for these workers in November 2002, cutting Delta’s costs by $500 million over five years.

The airline earlier this month said it’s trying to trim $5 billion in annual costs by 2006 and expects to achieve $2.3 billion of that by the end of this year. The airline said yesterday that the job, pay, and benefit cuts, along with the airline’s exit from its Dallas base and redesign of its Atlanta flight hub, will provide about $1 billion in savings.

Delta was forced to cut costs as rivals reduced labor expenses by seeking bankruptcy protection, as US Airways and United did, or by threatening bankruptcy, as was the case at AMR Corp.’s American Airlines. Delta said the need for lower costs increased this year because it expects annual fuel expenses to rise $680 million and competition is holding down fares.