Originally Posted by
Herkflyr
I fixed it for you. Let's get real. There are NO "deadzoners" left. They have all long left the property and the term ought to be retired.
For those (many of you now) wondering precisely what does "deadzoner" mean? Well, originally, it stretched all the way back to 2004/05 timeframe, when the pension was still there, but we all could see that it was on its last breath. Due to the nature of our then-intact pension (and still current Age 60 rule), so long as you were at least 50, you could retire, and take half the actuarial value of your predicted pension payments in a lump sum. If you retired early there was a hit of course. On the one end were some guys who panicked and retired early at 51 who got $400K in a lump sum (years later they could have made that in one year as senior widebody A, but who could predict the future) and that was it. On the other end were guys like a jumpseater we had once, 58 years old and about to get a 1.5 mil lump sum. Both those were outlier examples, and most early retirees, who took the lump sum while they could, got some amount between the two.
A "deadzoner" was a pilot, usually in his late 40s or perhaps early 50s, who was either ineligible to take early retirement at all (not yet 50) or if he was, it would have been greatly reduced due to taking it at a young age in the early 50s. So....not quite enough years on the property to avail himself of any decent retirement/lump sum, but also someone who had built up enough years with the company to both start anticipating a nice traditional pension based on years of loyal service, and also someone close enough to retirement that a healthy 16% DC fund like we have now (and it wasn't even 16% post BK for years) wouldn't have enough years to accrue significant assets to make up for the loss of the anticipated traditional pension--so back then we truly DID have "deadzoners."
We don't have any now. ANY pilot left claiming to be a "deadzoner" is merely appropriating the term to mean...whatever it is he wants it to mean. Anyone who was a captain in the early 2000s is surely a senior widebody A by now, and likely has been for a long time. Not exactly my definition of a deadzoner as they originally were.
Great review. One thing that is never brought up is when the retirement age changed from 60-65 how many "Dead-zoners" were preventing from making a foolish decision (in hindsight) to retire early. If you think about it, the arbitrary cutoff probably saved hundreds of Pilots from pulling the trigger which for most ended up being a very poor move. I'm sure some guys were very happy with the move but I ran into my share of early retiree simulator instructors who wished for a do over.
I also agree that there really are no more Dead-zoners left at Delta. There are still plenty of Pilots left who were royally screwed in the BK process and those most affected were the ones who flew through it. However even new hires are still feeling some lingering effects of BK, but as the BK recedes into the past the negative affects will obviously continue to diminish.
Scoop