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Boeing, engineers reach tentative contract

CHICAGO, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- The Boeing Co. has reached a tentative contract agreement with its aerospace engineers averting a possible strike, union leaders said Saturday.

Details of the tentative pact between Boeing, based in Chicago, and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, representing 21,000 employees, were set to be released later Saturday, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The contract would avert a second walkout by a Boeing union this fall. The aerospace company's machinists walked out and shuttered its aircraft assembly lines for much of September and October, contributing to delays in the production of two new planes, the 787 Dreamliner and a larger version of Boeing's 747 jumbo jet, the newspaper said.

InBev sells unit to gain Budweiser OK

LEUVEN, Belgium, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Belgian brewer InBev NV has moved closer to its acquisition of Anheuser-Busch Cos. by agreeing to sell Labatt USA, InBev officials say.

Labatt USA is a small sales arm held by the Belgian-Brazilian brewing conglomerate, which will sell the 55-person operation to comply with U.S. Justice Department antitrust requirements, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Although InBev's markets and those of Anheuser-Busch, maker of Budweiser beer, have little overlap, U.S. officials required the Labatt USA sale because without it, the merger likely would have prompted higher beer prices in upstate New York, where Labatt's brands are popular in Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the Journal reported.

InBev officials told reporters they expect to complete the Anheuser-Busch transaction "as soon as practicable," with some beverage industry analysts saying the deal may be completed next week.

British and Chinese regulators have yet to give their blessing, the newspaper said.

AIG to distribute deferred worker pay

NEW YORK, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- American International Group Inc. says it will distribute $503 million in deferred compensation to its employees, removing an incentive for them to quit.

In a statement released Friday, the troubled New York insurance giant said the payments to about 6,200 of its employees comes from its deferred-compensation programs, and were meant to be disbursed to employees when they quit, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

The program was funded by employee contributions deducted from their paychecks, collected by the company and put into 14 deferred-compensation programs. AIG spokesman Nicholas Ashooh told the Journal that the money will paid out in the first quarter of next year to discourage employees from leaving the company, which is set to receive another $40 billion in U.S. government bailout funds.

AIG last month agreed with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to refrain from distributing $600 million from separate deferred-compensation and bonus pools for its financial-products unit, the Journal said.

American tests cell phone boarding passes

CHICAGO, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- American Airlines says it's testing a new kind of boarding pass in Chicago allowing fliers to flash a bar code e-mailed to their mobile phones.

Under the paperless system, the airline e-mails a boarding pass bar code to the ticketholder, who opens the e-mail on an Internet-enabled device -- such as cell phone or Blackberry -- holds it up to a scanner and boards the plane, the Chicago Tribune reported Saturday.

The technology was rolled out this week on a test basis at American's security checkpoints at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, the newspaper said. American joins Continental and Delta airlines in testing the process.

The new system is more secure than paper boarding passes, American spokesman Billy Sanez told the newspaper, saying that while paper boarding passes are scanned only at the gate, mobile passes are scanned twice -- once at the gate and also at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints.

The e-mailed boarding passes also use an encryption technology to prevent forgeries, officials told the Tribune.