"A Lot"? what percentage of pilots retiring at age 65 have a SL balance in excess of 500 hours. That number would be telling. The current United contract is a "use it or lose it" for sick leave and many pilots as they near retirement are having the elective surgeries they've been putting off for a career, and of course not wanting to leave anything on the table. To use "pilots on sick leave" as a metric of reliability for UAL pilots under the current CBA is disingenuous at best. Reporting pilots that start a long term disability claim at age 63 or older would be a far more accurate measure of pilot heath for that age group, and ALPA R&I could easily provide those numbers. Since LTD requires verification of illness by the policy underwriter, there'd be a much lower risk of the numbers being skewed by "creative scheduling".