Why? If ALPA's goal was that they "wanted the senior, mostly older, pilots to be able to fly past 60"...Why would they have the no retroactivity clause put in the bill?

 

... as opposed to wanting the younger (under 30 year old) pilots to fly past 60?

I live near a major United Airlines domicile. Several of my friends and neighbors are UAL Captains. After United's bankruptcy (and many of the Airline Industry antics as a whole), they couldn't afford to retire and were frequently on Capitol Hill lobbying their Congressmen for their help in changing the law.

This was a BIG PROBLEM for ALPA! Whether we like it or not, those guys hosed all of us. At least the FDX pilots have the option to retire at 60.

As an interesting side story ... one of those UAL Capt. friends now wants to retire at 63 but is concerned about healthcare costs for himself and his 59 year old wife? He was one of those guys that supported ObamaCare also. What goes around, come around?

And ... I'm not sure what any of this has to do with "Lie Flat" seats?

 

Again had ALPA wanted to be fair to all of its members it would have lobbied to gradually raise the age to 65 over a period of 10 years. No big winners no big losers. Less of an impact on the career field.

 

They confused you with one of us Atlas guys flying your extra Xmas freight.

Welcome to my world...

 

Those guys were off the property - no longer ALPA members - they had no vote and no backing. The guys that were nearing age 60, still in ALPA were the ones they were concerned about (themselves).

And to Mark - I'm sure that factored in to. What didn't factor in was changing the law so it protected our CBA protected DB plan.

 

ALPA got the final verbiage changed to "active flight deck crewmembers" (note: that's inclusive of both pilots & flight engineers)

This was as close to retroactivity as they could get

Most ALPA carriers didn't care, they no longer had FEs

Only Fedex and NWA/Delta had aircraft with active FEs

The NWA/Delta MEC did not push for this change in verbiage -- it came from Fedex

 

But it was the right thing to do....

 

Here comes the future
American Airlines adds 'Premium Economy' seats - Dec. 10, 2015

 

I flew with Joe F who was at the meeting. The NWA representative's exact quote was, "F%ck 'em."

 

Yes, ALPA did get it changed to "Active Crewmembers". But, from what? The way it's been presented in the courts is that ALPA had the language changed to only include active pilots...Otherwise every retired, age 60 to 65, pilot would have had a right to come back into their seats with their seniority.

Wouldn''t that have been sweet.