Lost Retirements
 

I think we can all agree that you deadzoners got hosed by both timing and circumstance. You gave up a lot in order to save your jobs and the company. Me, and many others, wouldn’t be here without your sacrifices. So thank you, sincerely, for paving the way for the future pilots and employees here at Delta Air Lines. I enjoy my job and flying/learning alongside you all.

No, you will not receive any more money/benefits/windfall on this contract due to your poor timing and circumstance. Life happens, and we can all agree that your misfortune wasn’t planned. Thus, our futures aren’t planned either, and hopefully most of us are saving and planning on our future screw jobs from both the company, stock market, timing, technology changes, etc. As you can attest, life happens, and it will for us as well.

While flying alongside you guys, most of us have learned NOT to trust others with our money (DB), live on half of what we make in case we get sick, and expect to live through another 9/11, etc. You’ve told us that the future is bright... until it’s not. So prepare for a turbulent career and be pleasantly surprised if it all works out in the end.

The only equitable solution regarding upcoming negotiations is to increase everyone’s pay, defined contributions, soft time, QOL, sick/vacation, etc EQUALLY. Everyone is a winner, and can choose their investment strategies individually. Real estate, dividends, index funds or hookers and blow. It doesn’t really matter, because we ALL get a raise.

Any union that robs Peter to pay Paul is sealing its own fate. Any fake letters or ridiculous posts by Jerry just inflame a pilot group that can easily navigate to the most simple, pure and easy solution right in front of them: Pay and DC raises for all! QOL improvements for all. Sick and vacation increases, etc.

Let’s all accept that life isn’t fair, and learn from the circumstances of those before us. Let’s hope we can compensate those who took it on the chin well enough to allow them to recover as much as possible before they retire.

I know it sounds like I don’t care, but I’m just being honest. If anyone from the MEC reads this crap, know that you will LOSE the bottom half of this pilot group if you decide to benefit one group over another or introduce a DB. Simple solutions and fast results have the added benefit of helping deadzoners enjoy more “recovery” time, too! So let’s work together to get paid.

And please, no more fake/dumb/ineffective letters from Jerry/gszg.



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Isn't the entire justification for your position that it should be?

No, I️ think he said there are a multitude of things that we can’t control that are ‘unfair’. The things we can control shouldn’t be ‘unfair’.

Couple things.

There is rarely a time that I can remember that all things in the contract hit everyone equally.

There are thousands of pilots in the lower half of the seniority list that were hired at an older age that would love an alternative retirement because they, like the DZ'ers, don't have the time to accumulate wealth.

"you will LOSE the bottom half of this pilot group if you decide to benefit one group over another". Don't count on it.

They’ll lose guys in the middle, like me, too. I won’t vote for anything that takes from one group to give to another, nor will I roll over when I’m called selfish. Splitting the pilot group simply makes management’s job easier.

So help me out. If someone gets something that you do not, for example a targeted retirement recovery of some sort, yet you get massive contract improvements, that is divisive. How is the converse of that not true then? Younger, more junior pilots get a pay/benefit increase that will affect them for decades.

But life is not fair for those that had so much stolen so they should suck it up.


Again.


Tell me again who is being selfish here?

How are you going to quantify 'taking from one group and giving to another'?

Show your work.

pound your chest all you want, but history speaks. There is not "taking from one for another," There are contract improvements, some benefit the more senior, that everyone will be a part of someday.

Examples, SCOPE SCOPE SCOPE, RJ's, targeted DC, Frozen Pension, claim distributions, Think the middle and junior folks were screaming about these? At the top of their lungs.

Easy. When some suggest that deadzoners, which I've never seen clearly defined, get extra retirement benefits because of the sacrifices they've made. At the same time they're accusing those of us who don't fit their definition of being selfish, which is patently absurd since they have zero idea what everyone here has gone through. Additionally, there is only so much money that will be available for retirement benefits. It only stands to reason that starting a DB or an annuity will reduce the amount available for DC contributions. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, of course, and we all get one vote. Time will tell how this plays out, but it seems to me that dividing us up will hurt us rather than help us.

It isn't chest pounding by me any more than it is by those who are whining about selfish millennials, now is it. Also, your vote and my vote count exactly the same. The majority will rule, and I will live with it and move forward.

Interesting that you don't see what YOU are doing as divisive. Since my past doesn't matter that is...

Never suggested that your post didn't matter. It matters just as much as mine does. My perspective is that we all get an equal percentage increase to the DC plan in C2019. Not sure how that could be considered divisive. Also, a simple TVM calculator that I just looked at shows that if 13 years ago, when our pension got terminated, a pilot began throwing 3 grand a month into an S and P fund, they'd be sitting on more than 770K right now. That would help an awful lot as one heads into retirement. It is a simple reality that we are responsible for our own financial well being. It sucks that the pensions are gone, but gone they are, so we need to adjust our lifestyles in order to compensate. To suggest otherwise is to avoid facts.

Flew with a NWA captain this month with ten more years left at Delta who incessantly complained the entire trip about his retirement and how he wanted an annuity type DB because the 401k doesn't return enough. When I asked him what he has his 401k invested in, he had no idea other than a large majority of it being in Delta stock 😲. Next leg he showed me pictures of his recently purchased 100k sports car...

From the very beginning of my career I treated the DB plan as a house of cards. My wife is responsible for that because she didn't believe it would ever come to fruition and fortunately she would rather have a new socket set than a diamond ring. That being said, the glaring omission in your missive is that you don't have to adjust anything in your career because it has all been settled, and it is all in your name. There are many here who do not have that luxury. Your post still screams of 'tough toenails'.

Interesting.

Not trying to say everyone is like this at all. Just pointing out that they do exist. Hopefully they're a rarity though.

If he put the majority of it in Delta stock when we merged he should be a multimillionaire. It’s strange however that a pilot would go to all the trouble of setting up a brokerage link account and then have no idea what his retirement is invested in. Every pilot I know who has gone the brokerage link route is very attuned to their retirement.

Pi$$ poor financial planning on his part does not equate to the pilot group being responsible for making him whole again.

Does anyone have any specifics of how this DB would be implemented? 60% FAE or something?

Seems like there are lots of panties being wadded up with no details.

If everyone got this benefit -- with no change to the DC plan -- how is it "dividing the pilot group?"

FWIW, I think our retirement package should be comparable to similarly profitable companies, like FedEx and UPS.

Rinse..... aaaaaaaaand repeat

Even if only the DZers got it, which they won't... the rest of the group has something that they will NEVER have: an entire career with DC contributions that cannot be taken away.


You're welcome

Just not worth discussing any more. Nobody is going to change anyone’s mind. This issue is clearly defined by age.

Hey, can I claim age discrimination?;):eek: TIC for anyone who couldn’t tell.

Denny

There should be a class action lawsuit imho. Age 65 is discriminatory pure and simple.

I Would disagree. The courts in the US have ruled that you can impose a age limit for safety reasons. Ability does go down with age. Newer Aircraft being much easier to fly and requiring less physical skills certainly extends the age a pilot can safely fly but I think 65 is a good compromise.

Lost Retirements
 

And the only reason you say this is because of your retirement financial situation. If it wasn’t what you forecast it to be (lacking), you wouldn’t be making this statement.

It’s no coincidence the most vocal about age 65 discrimination also tend to be those barking about their retirement situation.

Not scientific. Purely arbitrary. If they wanted to institute cognitive testing to 'prove' your assertion, that would be fine, but I remember when 2 pilots over the age of 60 were not allowed to fly together for 'safety'. What happened to that?


Thanks for the chuckle. I'm fine, and thanks for your concern. I could leave now if I wanted, but I still love the job.

Damn, I hope you're glad that I didn't think that way after serving 4 years 10 months on B scale years ago. The contract came up to get rid of B-scale which "took away from one group to give to another"

So I got to pay for B-scale up front for almost 5 years, and then in the rear to get rid of it for the newbs. Not saying it was right or wrong, needed to be done, or didn't.....just stating facts.

OBTW......increasing DC doesn't help all pilots equally.....everyone understands that right?:eek:

I was furloughed for the better part of half a decade. Tough toenails for all of us.

I really didn't want to get involved in this thread, but the blue bolded above made my antennae perk up. You do know it's a little hard to put 3K a month into a S or P fund when you are furloughed, right?:rolleyes:

I was here for part of the B scale years and then got laid off, so I get it. And the DC does help everyone identically in terms of the percentage that Delta puts into it. If we want to get creative and talk about annuities and other retirement vehicles that can benefit everyone, that's great, but some have suggested singling out one group over the others, which I don't support. Again, only one idiot's opinion.

As someone who was furloughed, yes, I do. I was specifically referring to some of those who refer to themselves as deadzoners and thankfully weren't furloughed. Once USAir saw their pension go away in bankruptcy, the clock was ticking for ours. It was awful, but still incumbent upon individual pilots who were not furloughed to begin planning for their own retirement rather than relying on the pension, IMO.

How do you know he won't have to adjust anything? Can you see the future? Yes, times are good now, but just as it has been in the past one's actual career probably won't look anything like one had imagined it would.

Sure 401k is in our name now, but it doesn't mean a secure retirement or lucrative career is guaranteed.

... not to mention that even if you HAD 36k/yr in free cash for retirement savings, 770k ain't enough to live off of for 30 years.

Yup. I didn't get furloughed, but I was 235 (or so) from the bottom of the list for those same number of years you were out.

I am not complaining about that either just so you know, but I did have a backup plan if I got booted.

Ahhhhh but if he does it is self inflicted. DZers lost it at the point of a gun. It is something you will never understand I guess unless the .gov steals your Social Security and/or Medicare

I never said it was. My only point is that when our pension went away, it became incumbent upon us to make lifestyle changes since our retirement became our issue rather than the company's. I wish we all had a pension and could afford a Cadillac a month like the old days, but it just isn't the case. We are responsible for ourselves and have been for the better part of a decade.

You think you'll live to 95?

And here's 30 seconds of research to show that even $770K is a first world 'problem'.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/07/how-...every-age.html

And that sucked, too. The constant worry of wondering if you were going out, sliding backward, dealing with the bankruptcy. Stressful times indeed.

Ill be honest, Im very much against any pension due to the fears many have previously posted. Ill bite though and ask those of you who believe we should get one, please explain what exactly you would like to see, how you would to see it rolled out, and what would you be willing to sacrifice for it? Im only assuming that if this passed the company would remove our 401K DC and make it at best a "typical 401K" and have some kind of basic % match.

Im honestly trying to see what bullet points (preferably more comprehensive) you all have in favor of such an idea. Its easy in my opinion to complain about what were leaving on the table but I and Im sure others would like to hear specifics. The devil is in the details and the details matter.

Things start to bog down a little bit when an actual plan is asked for. Most suggestions I’ve heard have about 10 holes in them after a few minutes of thoughtful discussion. The FedEx guys seem to be working on an actual plan.