Originally Posted by
DAL 88 Driver
Let's take the MD-88/90 Captain position as an example.
2004 C2K rate was $240. After the 42% pay cut, that rate was $139. If a guy flew 80 hours per month, that's almost $97K for the year just in pay cuts. Now add in the lost value of the pension and a full decade of stagnation due to outsourcing, and I think you've easily got over $100K.
Up until two years ago, our bankruptcy level pay rates had only kept up with inflation. So up until two years ago, we were still looking at a 42% pay cut and that MD-88/90 Captain was still looking at a similar deficit in pay cuts. Again, add in the lost value of the pension and all those years of stagnation and I think you've easily got over $100K per year. The past two years (under C2012) reduced the pay cut from 42% to 34%. So very little progress there.
I don't have any hard data to conclusively prove the claim I'm making of the $1 million contribution per pilot (to date). But I think my assumptions are pretty sound. It's a wag on my part. But I'll bet it's not far off.
While we did give up our DB plan, we did not lose that money completely. I think it only fair that you include those numbers in your calculations, and if you choose to do so, while difficult to do, you would need to factor in the value trend line then versus now. I guess you would have to take your payrates then, project them forward (based on some sort of pay increase... I guess inflation??) and figure the 60%FAE. but since you have no idea what equipment you would have been flying.. and since bigger pays more... and half of bigger is being sold for scrap iron... how do you do that? My retirement investments have done OK, and I am quite pleased with the returns I have gotten to date. Would that be comparable to the DB plan? I have no idea, but I think it is pretty flippant to throw out a number like $1 million per pilot without a decent frame of reference, and your simple comparison doesn't get me there. I would love to have you convince me, but all I see is an emotional number with to little fact other than a projected payrate. I don't mean that in a derogatory way either. I would love to see a real analysis.