ATLANTA – Delta Air Lines pilots accepted a 14% pay cut in a deal their union negotiated with management to help the bankrupt carrier cope with an expected cash crunch.

About 58% of the members who voted yesterday approved the deal, which is the second double-digit pay cut Delta pilots have taken in 13 months.

Delta and the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents the Atlanta-based company’s 6,000 pilots, will now try to hammer out a comprehensive agreement by March. If not, the sides have agreed to let the decision be made by a three-person arbitration panel.

Ultimately, 3,001 pilots voted to slash the average salary of rank-and-file pilots from $170,000 to about $146,000. The pilots also would give up other pilot pay and cost items equal to an additional 1% hourly wage reduction.

Before the two sides reached the tentative agreement, the union had threatened to strike if their contract was thrown out.

The vote turned out an unusually high 86% of the group’s members, said Captain John Culp, the union’s spokesman. The fairly narrow margin, he said, “reflected the pilot group’s anger over the concession request.”

The pilots were also concerned that management of the nation’s third largest airline had failed to specify how further sacrifices would ensure Delta’s future, he said. Still, he said a majority of pilots approved the union-brokered deal because it bought them extra time to forge another agreement.

“We don’t like the position we’re in. But we feel time is of the essence,” Culp said. “This agreement gave us time for management’s reorganization plan to become clearer.”

The agreement, which the airline said would save $143 million, adds to the $1 billion in annual concessions Delta pilots approved in a five-year deal reached in 2004. That deal, which was meant to keep the cash-strapped airline out of bankruptcy, included a 32.5% pay cut.

“Given the critical nature of our financial situation, this provides much needed financial relief while we seek to reach a comprehensive agreement with ALPA,” Delta CEO Gerald Grinstein said in a statement.

Delta, which has lost more than $11 billion and cut more than 20,000 jobs over the last five years, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York on September 14. Last week, it asked the court for a six-month extension to exclusively file its reorganization plan, which is due January 12.

Analysts said the airline was bogged down in part by pilot salaries that ranked among the nation’s highest.

In a 2004 study of 103 airlines conducted by Washington-based Airline Forecasts LLC, Delta had the highest per capita pilot cost of any airline in the industry.