United, the world’s biggest airline, had become the focal point of passengers’ increasing anger because it canceled thousands of flights this summer — a good number of which United blamed on job actions by many of its 10,000 pilots.

The pilots, as they are entitled to do, quit working their normal overtime hours or called in sick to protest the lack of progress in contract negotiations, the airline asserted. The union, in turn, maintained that United had understaffed its busy flight operations and it denied that its members had staged a formal job action.

Regardless, when combined with bad weather in many parts of the country and record numbers of passengers flying this summer, the crew shortages led to chaos at U.S. airports and created an operating crisis at Chicago-based United.

But the airline and the pilots’ union, the Air Line Pilots Association, said they had struck a tentative deal after the two sides met around-the-clock over the past two days, guided by the National Mediation Board.

Terms were not immediately released, but the key issues were higher wages and job security, especially in light of plans by United’s parent company, UAL Corp., to buy another major airline, U.S. Airways Group Inc.

“I am very pleased with this tentative agreement,” said United Chairman James Goodwin, who recently went on television with ads that publicly apologized for United’s beleaguered service. United called the new pilots’ contract “industry leading.”

“I acknowledge that this has been a difficult and frustrating process, particularly for our customers, our front-line employees and our pilots,” Goodwin said in a statement.

Rick Dubinsky, chairman of the union’s master executive council, also said the union was “pleased that the recent intensive negotiations have produced a tentative agreement for pilots at United Airlines.”

But travelers probably won’t see a big improvement immediately. They can still expect delays on United and other airlines until after Labor Day, simply because of high passenger demand.

Moreover, United is also wrangling over the same issues with the union that represents its mechanics, who are also refusing overtime or taking other legal steps that are hobbling the airline, according to United.

Indeed, United’s Goodwin said “our absolute priority now is to continue working hard” to ink a new contract with its mechanics’ union as well.

The new pilots contract is still subject to approval by the master executive council, which doesn’t meet until Sept. 6-8, and then it has to be ratified by United pilots themselves.

United’s size — the airline flew 87 million passengers last year, and currently has 2,400 flights a day — by itself would have made the carrier a key target of passengers’ ire this summer over the problems of air travel.

But United’s struggle with labor exacerbated its situation, one that grew so dire that U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater recently called United “the poster child for what is wrong” with the airline industry.

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