Before or after Contract '02? According to the web site run by the brokerage house, I had about a $1.2 million lump-sum entitlement before the concessionary contract; about $625,000 now.

But let's not use 1985 as a reference year; that could be a potential distraction. Nobody got retirement credit for "those years."

The A Plan started in 1987. CAL was non-union then, so obviously it didn't come into existence because because it was negotiated. Assuredly, Lorenzo didn't give it to his guys out of the goodness of his heart.

Instead, it started by mandate of the Bankruptcy Court. The fact of the matter is that while the 1983 bankruptcy was a disaster for the employees, it wasn't even a good deal for the corporation. Lorenzo agreed to repay secured creditors (and some classes of unsecured creditors) 100 cents on the dollar, which is not a great achievement in debt shedding. He also had to convert all the equity in the other preexisting retirement plans into annuities and pay them out. Thus, the old CAL and TI guys got annuities payable upon their eventual retirement, and most of those plans were pretty close to being fully funded.

The judge set a deadline for resumption, or to be more exact, creation, of a new defined benefit plan for the employees still working--all employees, not just pilots. That's how the Continental Airlines Retirement Plan (CARP) got started in 1987. Later, the pilot's portion was split off, and thus the term "A-Plan" came into existence. In Lorenzo's time, it was no skin off his nose, because Day 1 of entitlement occurred toward the end of his term at Texas Air. But it did, indeed, become a "burden" for the company decades later. That led to Contract '02, but that's another story.