Eligible Delta employees have from April 15 to May 12 to tell the company if they want to leave.

In that time, employees such as flight attendant Paul Tanner, who lives in Bountiful, will be thinking hard. Tanner has worked for Delta as a flight attendant for 21 years. He says he qualifies for both retirement and early out.

His wife works part time, and he has a daughter who still lives at home. He's only 44 years old, and permanent retirement is out of the question. He would have to begin a second career.

For now, Tanner says he is waiting for more information from the company about how much money and benefits he and his family could receive if he left the company.

"The thing is, I like being a flight attendant," he said. "I like doing it for Delta."

Bruce Church has been a ramp worker for Delta in Salt Lake for 26 years. He, too, would qualify for an early retirement, but does not want to leave and find another job in the current economy.

Church is organizing Delta ramp workers, hoping they will elect to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. For the past 18 months, Church and other organizers have been collecting signatures to request an election.

The payout offer is "a good plan for anyone where Delta is their second job or people who are planning on retiring in the next 12 to 16 months," Church said. "Anyone else, we're counseling our people not to accept it."

Delta's flight attendants, meanwhile, are in the process of organizing an election over whether they should be represented by the Association of Flight Attendants-Communication Workers of America.

The federal government's National Mediation Board is verifying whether the signatures on a petition for an election are legitimate and will schedule an election, said Danny Campbell, a flight attendant with Northwest Airlines who is helping Delta flight attendants organize.

If the flight attendants were unionized similarly to Delta pilots, the company would have to negotiate with the union before encouraging people to retire or leave early, Campbell said.

"Part of the problem for the flight attendants at Delta, if they accept a program like this, is that the program is not legally binding," Campbell said, and Delta management can change the terms after employees agree to leave.

Campbell said that Delta may be trimming employees to prepare for a merger with Northwest. But most analysts believe the merger is off, at least in the near term, because the pilots could not agree on a seniority integration. The cost-saving measures announced Tuesday are part of a plan for Delta to fly solo, the analysts say.