I think if anyone had said changing the Earnings Cap to $285k was a huge win and cost the company a ginormous amount of $$$, they'd have been laughed off of this forum.

So, Dr K. Let's assume that the PSPP was considered, adopted, and approved 5 years ago...with a delayed implementation-so first retirees hit the street in Dec 31st of 2018.

The nitty gritty that we know of the PSPP is that it requires an annual contribution into our newly split off Pilot Only Retirement Trust fund. Let's assume a 1% salary contribution for this example. Let's assume 200 pilots retire each year 2018-2020. Let's assume the stock market loses 30% each year.

Pilot payroll is in the 1.2B range, so that's a lot of zeros there 1,200,000,000
1% of that is $12,000,000

2018 the DC limit was $275,000
So at 200 per, that's $1,100,000 of pension payout (assuming a 2% floor)

So, at year end we wind up with $10,900,000 minus 30% is $7,630,000

Plus $12,000,000 gets us to $19,630,000
DC limit was $280,000 so that's $1,120,000.
Year 1 folks would draw $1,100,000
So that puts our Trust at $17,410,000 minus 30% = $12,187,000

Plus $12,000,000 gets us to $24,187,000
DC Limit this year is $285,000 so that's $1,140,00
Year 1 folks another $1,100,000
Year 2 folks another $1,200,000
That puts our Trust at $20,827,000 minus 30% = $14,578,000


Rinse and repeat.
Hopefully it's a no brainer that year after year after year after year of 30% losses is going to eventually cause some liquidity issues in our Pension.
But how likely is that?

Or better yet, how likely is FedEx to survive an economic implosion like that. Painful for me to imagine how deep the furloughs would actually go.