No on your 401k DC. That’s a huge shortfall. Delta not only pays the DC while on LTD it pays the DC based on your normal salary. Not the reduced LTD income.

And after you get cobra ask me how I know. Though to be fair I was on LTD with the last contract this must be a change. I believe when I was out it was 9 months then I paid cobra.


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Hi all, looking forward to joining the team in July. I'm curious about the health insurance benefits. An earlier commenter mentioned about them for a single guy, but how does it look for a guy with a family? Thanks for the help.

HRA diamond plan is a PPO for families about $165 a check. Company puts in $3K to use towards deductable. You can cover the rest of the deductible with a pre tax flex spending account. It's the most cost effective plan we have and really no matter how you slice it (using little or lot of medical) it is the best deal. We use United Healthcare.

Also whatever you don’t use gets rolled over to the next year.

So for example for a family of 4 you get $3000 per year into your HRA account, your family deductible is $4500 so if you spend it all that first year, you need to come up with $1500.

Say you only spend $1000 that year, $2000 gets rolled to the next year and next year you start with $5000 in your HRA to cover the $4500 deductible for the year.

Awesome, thanks for the info!

The flex spending account is use it or lose it. But if you need to use it there are online shops you can buy medical supplies...I.E. Buy some nice equipment and resell on ebay

Which firm manages the retirement accounts, eg. fidelity, vanguard, etc?

Charles Schwab


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I'd argue it's ABOVE industry standard - even industry leading. Here's how I see it after looking at the chart on LTD SWAPA put out in Nov. 2019 as part of their info packet to let their guys see how they stacked up going into negotiations against American, United, Delta, Southwest, Alaska, FedEx, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Spirit, and UPS:

I know many of the pilots reading this don't work for Spirit, so I'll try to add info that might seem redundant to Spirit pilots.

At Spirit, we can get up to $15k/month in LTD pay-out (@ 60% of Pre Disability Earnings [PDE] - so, if you make $300k/year, you make $25k/month, 60% of that is $15k). JetBlue, as far as I can tell, is the only other airline that can get up to $15k/month. Every other airline is lower in both PDE % and LTD monthly cap (except Delta, who has no LTD monthly cap, but a 50% PDE limit, so you'd have to make $360k at Delta vs $300k Spirit to get $15k/month).

The biggest reason Spirit's plan is superior (IMO) is because Spirit only pays for the first $5k or benefits, and the pilots pay for the buy-up out of their own pocket with after-tax $ (yep, you read that right!). It costs about $80/month to pay for the full $10k buy-up, and you can only buy up to the amount you're eligible for, so if you make less than $100k (first year FO), you can't buy-up, and a pilot who makes $150k/year can only buy-up to $7,500, which would cost about $24/month.

The key is, insurance paid for out-of-pocket with after-tax $'s is tax free. Company paid for insurance is NOT. So, when you go out on LTD, you want as much of the $ to be tax free as possible. You already took a unexpected pay-cut, so you're going to want every $ you can to be tax-free.

Spirit will pay $10k tax free, $5k taxed monthly.
JetBlue will pay $1.5k tax free, $13.5k taxed
United will pay $8k, all taxed

I'd rather pay $80/month for $15k, $10k tax free when I REALLY need it.

I'd rather have Harvey Watt too, though.