Originally Posted by
sailingfun
I am not sure where Timbo gets the above information. I have a lot of friends at AMR. Their B fund was a much smaller fund then what Delta had paying about half the benefit as the 60% FAE plans. This was because they also had a B fund. At the time of the chapter 11 filing the fund was not in distress and had adequate funding. You can't terminate a fund unless it is in distress and meets the but for test. That means that but for retaining the plan the company could not emerge from chapter 11. This was never a serious threat at AMR and management and the pilots were well aware of that. American had 5 billion in cash on hand and could have easily written a check for any shortage.
This was vastly different then the situation at Delta where the plan was declared in distress and in fact was only 20% funded with a shortfall of 4 billion dollars.
Turns out you are not the only one with a lot of friends at American. My buds there have 27-30+ years seniority, and they have triple (or more) what we have in our retirement plans since we flushed ours.
When our MEC Chairman starts ranting about our pay rates being better than AMR's, why don't we ask him about their retirement plans vs. ours?
You know what would be really good? If the PBGC threw ours right back at Delta and said, "Hey, now that you are making a Billion per quarter, you're going to have to fund these retirement plans you dumped on the tax payers."