Originally Posted by sailingfun

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All in all you have a very poor understanding of most of what you mention.
Lets go back to the pension. You can not take a earned and accrued benefit away. You can reduce what might be earned in the future as you mention. In fact they not only did they do that in a attempt to save the pension but the froze it entirely and stopped all future earnings on the DB plan. You can't reduce it more then nothing. This happened in LOA46.
A new pension was constructed with a DC plan under a matrix. Guys with over around 21 years of service were awarded nothing in the matrix. Essentially all the senior guys had all pension funding stopped. Again you advocate reducing future accruals for those pilots when in fact they did not reduce future accruals but stopped them completely.
As far as the frozen pension you say they walked away with millions. Not quite the case. The average pilot went out with 800 to 900K. Remember they had to take both age and length of service penalties if they left early. Nothing was waived. There were a few who has a million dollar plus lumps but that was not the norm. In addition most had about 100k in the MPP plan. The MPP plan was saved although the PBGC made a grab at it and failed. All pilots not just those who retired kept the MPP money. Remember that the lump some option was for 50 percent of the value of the retirement not the entire value. After the age and service cuts and then getting 50 percent rumors of multi millionaires were just that. Rumors. I had a friend with very high final average earning. He left at 55. His lump was 860,000 dollars. That was pretty much the average. His PBGC payout is zero.

So lets go back to your statement about this very powerful lobby.

"There was most certainly in the interest of a very powerful lobby of a couple thousand guys who were about to punch out at the absolute apex of C2K grandeur who made sure nothing was changed, frozen or reduced in any capacity so they could get theirs."

The DC plan was frozen in LOA 46. This very powerful lobby somehow managed to allow the new follow on DC plan not to award them 1 penny. Not quite your statement that nothing was frozen, reduced in any capacity. The company proposal on the new DC plan was a flat 9 percent to all pilots. The union redirected that money via a matrix to award nothing to the lobby you speak of and target junior pilots with more money.

Your last statement about the pilots allowed to fly after retirement as a bonus is also not quite right. Only about half the pilots got to work past retirement. The average PRP worked for 6 weeks. Most were one month extra a few were up to 3 months. A very limited number of Line Check Airman got to stay for up to 9 months. This was because the 767 FAA POA at Delta refused to qual more then 2 new 767 LC pilots per month.

Overall there is nothing but urban legend in your post with little actual fact.