I just popped in to say... I like seeing arguments about deadzoners again! Next up, such classics as “Sick Leave Verification” and “Training Hotels.”

 

How about an override for former regional pilots stuck there during age 65 and the recession? We should be made whole

 

I fear the sheep have accepted their fate of oppression... not a word of complaint about the walk-around safety vest!

 

And reprogram icrew so that we swap reserve days and not x days

 

A deadzoner is a pilot who will end up with a smaller retirement than the majority of pilots because he lacked sufficient time for the DC plan to fund a replacement retirement when the DB plan was terminated. When the DB plan was initially frozen it had a greater effect on the bottom third of the seniority list and would have left that portion of the list with a smaller benefit. To compensate for that the then new DC plan was targeted to proved the bottom third of the list a much higher DC benefit. Deadzoners saw between 0 and 3% DC money. The bottom of the list saw up to 18%. The goal was to attempt to provide each pilot regardless of seniority a 49% FAE benefit. The company provided funding for a straight 9% to every pilot. The union targeted that money from 0 to 18% per pilot based on the amount of your frozen benefit plus a age factor.
In the event the DB plan was terminated the union stated they would retarget future DC funds to make the pilots receiving under 9% whole. That never happened and we went to a flat rate DC plan so deadzoners lost that DC money. In addition the money via the note and claim received when the DB plan terminated was initially supposed to be based on how much a pilot lost with the termination of the DB plan. When the calculations were run it left the bottom of the list with a very small payout. The note and claim money was redistributed with a new formula where they refigured everyone’s lost DB benefit by plussing all pilots up to a FAE of 205,000. When that still sent the majority of the funding to the top of the list they added a payment minimum based on years of service to again plus up the bottom of the list.

Having said all of the above most deadzoners should have a comfortable retirement if they did not blow the note and claim money on boats booze and multiple marriages. They also saw a nice increase in PBGC money when the stock the PBGC received for assuming the DB plan performed so well the PBGC was forced by law to increase the Delta pilot payments.

In summary the union back then made the decision as a issue of fairness to attempt to provide all pilots with a roughly equal retirement by providing targeted funding from the DC and note and claim. The union was controlled at that point by the same pilots who some are calling greedy today when those pilots are now asking for some type of targeted system to provide a more equal projected retirement benefit.

 

As someone who never in his life projected anything based on my future final average earnings, it’s probably easy for me to make this observation: FAE is an odd metric to use in a retirement annuity formula, is it not? I understand the effort to achieve fairness, but a model that ignores all but three years of one’s career to formulate an annuity paying out over three or four decades just doesn’t smell right. It won’t fix the past, but getting company DC to 18-20% seems to me to be the much fairer way to go to more accurately reflect one’s career contributions in retirement money.

 

The model they used had nothing to do with the last 3 years of a pilots career. They took the actual frozen value of each pilots DB plan. No one was anywhere near their last 3 years in the deadzoner range. The value was what you had earned and accrued at the time the plan was frozen.

 

Makes it appear that it is about money....hold that thought, we will circle back in a bit...

If your Capt pay (for sake of argument I'll assume you are ER Capt) of $300K+ doesn't even pay your taxes, I would say you must be doing very well with other income streams to have that tax liability.

I beg to differ.

OK, how old are you?...Wait a second....

Assuming you are leaving in 4 years due to hitting age 65, that means you are 61. So taking 3 years of reduced 58 hour VEOP pay (approx $200K / year) would not have resulted in being ready to retire, but working full time for the remaining 4 years would? (Maybe you are a GS ninja that would make $500K a year for the last 4 years, just to pad the bank account, IDK)

I'm trying to be emphatecic to the struggles of others and I well aware of what folks when through with 9/11, furloughs, bankruptcy, merger, loss of pension, age 60-65 stagnations, etc, etc, but you are all over the place in this thread....it IS about the money (and that's fine), but you must acknowledge that on one hand you are basically saying you couldn't afford to take the VEOP, but on the other hand you are making so much income you need a Delta Capt job just to pay your tax bill.

Color me confused.

 

I understand that. But the underlying formula that pilots compare their benefit to, or calculate as lost/stolen was this future snapshot of what they thought they might generate in their final three years (if I’m not mistaken). The “beauty” of the DC system is that it’s a running tally affected every year one works, capturing the ebbs and flows along the way. Less is left to chance, as when so much rode on the last 10-15% of one’s career, a decade or two into the future.

 

True if everyone was on a DC system from the day they were hired. That’s not true at Delta. In fact the more you increase the DC amount the bigger the disparity in retirement becomes between older and younger pilots unless you heavily target that DC money as was once done as a issue of fairness.