Originally Posted by Denny Crane

I'm not a numbers kind of guy and everyones number is different based on what they had earned up to the bankruptcy and freezing then termination of the pension. Frankly I believe myself and anyone else in my position is SOL as far as getting any payback. I just want the younger folk to realize the magnitude of the losses. In my case I had an earned benefit at age 60 of $7800/month. If I retired at age 60 now and started taking my PBGC, I'd get $3800/month. 4000x12=48000x25(years)=1,200,000 dollars. Yes, there are other factors that will reduce that amount but, on the whole, I'm losing about a million over my lifetime (85). Mother died at 78 and father still alive at 92.

As I've said before, I'll be okay in retirement. But the idea of having forfeited that much money does kinda rankle me. I'm not losing any sleep etc and I believe I have a pretty good attitude...........but, when I think about it, I just shake my head.

Maybe I'm wrong, but sometimes I get the impression that pilots that didn't participate in the DB at the time don't realize that this was deferred compensation. It was mentioned by someone that the contract can change and he is right it did. I got no problem with that. The problem is that you shouldn't be able to take away a benefit that was earned under previous contracts. Unfortunately that's exactly what happened in bankruptcy. C'est la vie.

Personally I think that the company should follow it's rules of the road and make good on their retirement promises for ALL participants in the DB plan up until the time it was terminated. I think they should do this without affecting our contract or negotiations. Determining how much each participant should get is waaaaaay above my pay grade but I'm sure there are ways to figure that out. I know, a pipe dream.

Denny