Not much assumption here but yes the point of starting the discussion is to test and reduce my ignorance. My comment about the economics and philosophy was not meant as an insult, people have lives to live and ops spec manuals to stare at so most won't ever have time to study hardcore business strategy. Of course on the flip side, you have the 55 year old co-workers who come up and ask "what do you know about this retirement plan business?" and after realizing they mean any retirement and not the details of the last negotiation deal, "haven't you gone to any of the dozens of free union retirement seminars in your 30 years here?", "a seminar whats now?"
As for why you would go with a traditional style pension I'm not following what you're getting at, possible I missed something.
Sure some contracts have negotiated a larger company contribution than other contracts, but that really has nothing to do with the inherent constraints or limits of a plan type.
I didn't intend the IBEW example as a direct drop in solution. (Nor was I encouraging the old "pay for training" sham.) More like take a reduced wage for the first year or two at a new company to defray the training investment risk (just the same as you currently see on nearly all FO scales) and then after that you bump all the way up to the flat "journeyman" pay for whatever weight bird your wrangling. Left and right seats still on separate scales of course.
RLA constrains the methods used in negotiating not so much the desired content of the contract.