Originally Posted by
Wasatch Phantom
Question for Sailingfun:
Sailing you and were both at Delta pre-bankruptcy and during the days of the defined benefit retirement plan....
When you were a First Officer and flew a trip with a senior Captain and the subject of "what you made last year" came up, did you or he add in Delta's contribution to your DB retirement plan, or even Delta's match to the Family Care Savings Plan?
No one I flew with did (nor did I).
In that same vein, suppose a Delta pilot has a newborn that has massive health care needs to the tune of $250K. Do you add the 250K to his W-2 and subtract his health care premiums?
Last year I was surprisingly healthy and my health care premiums were a heck of a lot more than what was paid out. Do I get to deduct that "loss" from my Delta income?
I'm curious as to how your accounting methodology handles these situations?
Funny you should mention this. I got into an argument with a friend about pay discussing the note and claim money and he told me flat out we had to speak in pre-tax terms as he lived in a state with no income tax and I live in one that does. He had a different amount of kids and deductions and so forth. I've been been saying pre-tax income since then when talking finances.
I wonder if the SWAPA booklet used pre-tax W-2 or "after-tax and deductions" W-2? I would assume they had to use pre-tax to get an accurate average across the whole country because of city, county, state and federal tax rates? Plus each pilot chooses the amounts of deductions and withholding, so you'd really have to ignore that. That could really make a big difference in W-2 "earnings" and probably explains those high averages we hear from management when they cry foul during negotiations.