Originally Posted by
sailingfun
I forgot about the Pan Am and Western pilots. I would bet however that out of the 505 well under 100 were former Pan Am or Western. Some may have been Western but the bulk of the Pan Am guys would not have made the cut with the seniority numbers they had. In addition in that time frame very few Western or Pan Am guys retired. They choose door number 3 which was to go out on disability which paid 50 percent of FAE plus whatever retirement they had from Pan Am or Western.
That disability concept is going to return big time in the next few years as pilots who don't want to work to 65 realize how much better off they will be on disability.
The medical you mentioned was that the company paid their medical to age 60. The normal contract provided medical for everyone at age 60 retirement. Their only benefit was paid medical for the time period from actual retirement to age 60.
Keep in mind the entire program was conceived to put the furloughed pilots back to work and mitigate the job losses from the major vacation changes made in the 96 contract.
Sailing is this what you were talking about as far as the Pan Am pilots?
. Post-Retirement Medical Benefits
Years ago, Delta management had instituted a ten year service requirement before Delta would pay the full cost of a non-pilot employee's post retirement medical insurance premiums. The ten-year service requirement was eventually applied to Delta's pilots when Delta and ALPA entered into a collective bargaining agreement in October 1990. However, in August 1991, the ten-year service requirement was waived to exempt all pilots who were on the Delta seniority list as of August 27, 1991 and had reached age 50 on or before January 1, 1992.
Because the Pan Am pilots were not integrated into the seniority list until November 1, 1991, none of them qualified for this grandfather clause. As discussed above, at the time of the APA, Delta did not permit its captains and first officers to bid down for flight engineer positions after they had reached the FAA-mandated retirement age of 60. Thus, any Pan Am pilots who were over 50 at the time of the APA would not be able to qualify for fully paid post-retirement medical benefits unless they were willing to accept employment in a ground position after they turned 60.