Maybe it was David Bronner's Southern charm, or his common touch, that won over US Airways' pilots last week.

Whatever the US Airways chairman did, it worked surprisingly well.

On the strength of a dinner and an early morning presentation, the unpredictable pilots union is now among Bronner's biggest fans -- and ready to help the money-losing company do whatever it takes to turn things around. The change marks a remarkable turnaround for a once-skeptical group that a few months ago called for the resignation of US Airways Chief Executive Officer David Siegel.

"So much of what we do is based on a foundation of trust," said US Airways pilots chairman Bill Pollock, who invited Bronner to Charlotte, N.C., last week for the chairman's first meeting with employees. "The pilots were looking at him to say, 'Is this someone we can trust and whose leadership we would follow?' " In the end, "They were willing to take a chance on this guy."

Accompanied by fellow US Airways board member Bruce Lakefield, Bronner had dinner with a group of pilots at a Charlotte hotel Thursday night and followed that up with a formal presentation the next morning that received several rounds of applause. After two hours of remarks and a Q&A, the pilots' leadership group was so impressed that the union passed, with virtually no debate and a unanimous vote, a resolution authorizing the union to discuss concessions that could help return the company to profitability.

Some pilots in attendance later flooded the message boards with positive appraisals of Bronner's performance. One North Carolina pilot, Richard Paul, wrote on a pilots-only Web site, "Jesus couldn't have made a bigger impression than these two did."

Bronner and Lakefield "spoke with openness and candor. They were honest and admitted the mistakes that have been made. It was very refreshing," Paul wrote, "as I have never heard a manager from this airline ever admit they have ever made a mistake."

As a way to connect with the union members, Bronner, who runs a $24 billion pension fund in Alabama and controls 37 percent of US Airways' stock, told stories about his modest upbringing, describing how the son of a pool hall owner saved for college by working on a railroad as a brakeman and worked his way through college as a janitor. "He talked about how he came up through his own efforts and along the way came to appreciate the value of hard work and sacrifice," Pollock said.

Bronner, according to Pollock, also talked about his desire to see his $240 million investment to the end by growing and fixing the carrier instead of liquidating it. But the Alabama state pension fund chairman also emphasized that he could not do this as long as it remained in the red, and expressed concerns about not meeting covenants on $900 million in government-backed loans, a sour credit rating that could endanger regional-jet financing and an audit from accountants KPMG in March.

The day before Bronner's speech, the company touched on many of the same themes and presented a "going forward" plan that envisioned US Airways becoming a "hybrid" airline utilizing both hub-and-spoke and point-to-point flying; reducing labor costs by as much as 2 cents per seat for every mile flown; and changing the public perception of the Arlington, Va.-based carrier as it prepares to do battle with low-fare rival Southwest Airlines in Philadelphia, a US Airways hub.

Southwest, which is launching Philadelphia service in May, has its own problems there. Its flight attendants plan to march through downtown Philadelphia today to protest their lack of a contract with the Dallas-based carrier.