Pre-BK, NWA had 5 hours/mo accrual and if you didn't call in sick for that month, you got an additional 7 hours (it was a little more complicated than that, but that's the simple version). So if you didn't call in sick all year, you had a maximum of accrual of 144 hours per year with no cap.

Folks were running into their late 50s (no age 65 yet) with 2000-2200 hours of sick time saved up. It wasn't hard to get a healthy bank. I used a regular amount of sick time, and I had over 1000 hours 10 years in. You could modulate your sick leave usage every month anywhere from 50 hours to the monthly max if you were trying stretch out your bank for some reason.

The intangible was if you had something that got pumped up and went the distance, the average pilot was on sick leave for about a year and a half before transitioning out to disability. During that time, you were still an active employee, instead of the sort of pseudo-retired, 2nd tier status pawned off on Harvey-Watt to deal with. There really wasn't a need for something like DPMA because you had effectively a year+ at full pay, although a number of people enrolled into a NWALPA only LOL plan (which ultimately got transferred to National as their LOL plan). I did participate in that, and at max benefit level, you had to get a physical to enroll.

Not pinging our current program at all, but that's probably what a replacement sick leave program would have to look like for starters, plus some "starter amount".

Yes, there was a version of GFB, but only for holidays or if you really brought attention to yourself like trying to JS or something. I don't remember anyone ever getting called about it. There was no sick lookback system at all.