Run on the bank? How many exactly would retire in Q1? 11? Lol....

This coming Dec I suspect the number would exceed 150. You would probably see some 2nd quarter guys go on 31 Dec also. Maybe 200 total.

LOL there wouldn't be any "run on the bank" in that scenario that's just silly.

For the hypothetical example used (3-31-20 retiree) the much larger issue would be the 3 months of wages (still including PS) than wether or not PS was split into 2 calendar years.

The number of pilots who would have gone to the full 3-31-20 with valentines day PS who would then leave 12-31-19 because of split PS would be absolute zero every time.

That was not the scenario we were discussing. A pilot posted that he thought a pilot retiring after 31DEC19 would not receive any profit sharing at all for 2019. That is off course not the case however if it were true you would see a lot of pilots leave on 31 Dec.

Oh, so if something that was not true was true then XYZ. Then yes of course you would see a spike of end of the year retirees for some amount of first quarter/half retirees for the next year. However even that spike would hardly be a "run on the bank" as it would only remove a 14%-ish incentive and not getting that would only be a proportional offset to the 100% income that 14% was based on.

Regardless though, its good to clarify that retirees will always get whatever profit sharing they would have gotten (prorated to when they retired) because not knowing that could drive some incorrect decision making.

It's not pro-rated though. It's your earnings as a percentage of all eligible earnings.

You could use either phrase and be contextually correct. A full year's work vs half a year's work could be considered pro rated. The actual dollar amount of course depends on wages. In any case my point was that even the hypothetical 03-31-20 retiree would only have a 14% lost income incentive as the primary motivator to retire 3 months early, but would also have to volunteer to lose 100% income during that same period in order to quit in protest over not getting the additional 14% (assuming the incorrect hypothetical situation that's been well debunked was true) therefore even is that were the case, it would have a negligible effect on the majority of those individual decisions.

I suspect profit sharing this year is going to be 16 to 17%. That is the equivalent of about two months pay. That means that any pilot retiring in the first two months of 2020 would be paying the company to work if PS were forfeited. A pilot retiring in the 2nd quarter, say 1 Apr would work those 4 months for 50% pay. I think you would see 95% of 1q retirements leave 31 Dec and 50% of the 2nd quarter guys.
Different from this discussion but relevant to retirement is the fact we might see a small increase in early retirements the first part of next year. I know several pilots who want to make sure they are on the property after the contract amendable date in case there are any changes to retirement. Personally I don’t see that happening but there are a few hanging around just in case.

Why are we even discussing this? It's not even remotely close to being a reality...

You're probably right. I'm just used to the term prorated to imply time-based reduction. My point was simply that a retiring 330 captain who earned 200k in 4 months of 2019 would net the same check as a retiring 737 captain who earned 200k in 6 months... and they'd both get the same as a whole-year NB FO who had 200k of eligible earnings.