Tell me this isn't true...

I heard CAL fired some pilots after HR determined that their divorces were not sincere.

Apparently, the company thought the pilots were trying to take advantage of a pension loophole when a CAL bankruptcy seemed to be a very near threat.

I heard that if a pilot got divorced, the pension was payable to the ex-spouse.

And apparently the company felt these divorces were not legit, and pursued termination then legal action.

Fact or fiction?

 

Old news... Topic discussed in a few months back.

 

Do you have a link? I used the search function on apc and found nothing? I too never heard of this...

 

Oops. Do you know how I could find the old thread?

 

Continental pilot pension scam, nine disappointed pilots

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed) on May 24th 2009 at 12:00PM
Continental Airlines is looking to cash in on pilots who cashed in on a divorce scam. The pilots used sham divorces to divert more than $10 million to their ex-spouses. Post-divorce, the exes cashed in on retirement benefits, and the fliers could stay in the sky – and keep earning.
It's really pretty simple. A couple divorces. The pilot assigns all pension benefits to the ex-spouse. Then, the recipient goes to a state court and gets an order for a lump sum. After the divorce was final long enough for the money to start rolling in, these couples "reconciled." Yep, they remarried once the scam was complete.
So far, eight of the nine pilots are gone (either by quitting or being fired). One was rehired, because he promised to repay the cash. Apparently, he didn't do so fast enough and has been named as a defendant. The spouses are being pursued, as well. Seven of the alleged scammers are men, and two are women.
If you don't want to believe that greed is responsible for the situation, you can call what these pilots did a Darwinian play to protect their cash. The average pilot on Continental is eligible for a lump sum of up to $900,000 upon retirement. But, some airlines are terminating their pension programs and turning them over to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which backstops pension plans up to an amount that's not even close to $900,000. Faced with the prospect of losing their pensions, therefore some are turning to (alleged) fraud.
In addition to the nine who got nailed, other pilots have tried and failed.

 

Delta had some guys who tried to pull this off also and they were fired when they got caught. If they actually go through with a divorce, move out of the house, have a lawyer split stuff up, etc. it's gonna be hard to prove that they divorced just for the pension. Lots of people reconcile after being divorced.

I heard one of the Delta guys never reconciled and re-married, but that the ex was living in the same house. An investigator called the neighbors and some of their family members and nobody was aware that they had been divorced. I guess she never moved out and even the kids didn't know what they had been doing. This one wouldn't be too hard to prove. Not only did Delta fire them, I think there was potential jail time involved due to the fraud.

 

Got to love living in a world where the airline can take your pension but you can't...

 

I don't understand how it's any of the airline's business what happens in a marriage.

If they get divorced, they're divorced....regardless of what the terms of that divorce are.

 

With the typical corporate behavior going on in this industry you'd think the airline's execs would have given these guys some kind of award and a job in management. It seems right up their alley.

 

So true.

I heard over on the official CAL crackpipe that one of the pilots in question was back on the line again. I cannot confirm.