Air France offers wage deal with deadline set this Friday - unions

PARIS (Reuters) - Air France's (AIRF.PA) management has proposed a wage deal which it wants unions to sign on Friday, said officials from the two major labour unions, who signalled they were willing to sign the deal.

In order to be valid, the deal will also require the signature of several other unions. Air France has set the deadline at 3pm (1300 GMT), the union officials said.

"The measures seem to go in the right direction for both 2018 and 2019," said Bernard Garbiso, secretary general of the CFE-CGC, the largest Air France union.

"The initial feedback we are getting within our organisation is rather positive," said Christophe Dewatine of the CFDT, which is the largest union among ground personnel at Air France.

A spokeswoman at Air France declined to comment.

The dispute over pay has triggered weeks of strikes at the airline group earlier this year, grounding hundreds of flights and wiping 335 million euros off the group's first-half earnings.

New Chief Executive Ben Smith joined Air France-KLM last month from Air Canada and rapidly took over direct leadership of the Air France business from the carrier's departing managing director Franck Terner.

The offer includes a 2 percent raise retroactively applied from the start of the year, plus another 2 percent next January, said the union officials.

(Reporting by Cyril Altmeyer; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)