Airline Pilot Central Forums

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Originally Posted by Lewbronski (Post 3585381)

In practice, it is severely lacking in my own experience but especially as evidenced by the stories I've heard about our pilots or their family members dealing with serious medical situations and then also having to deal with the stress of rejected claims and the bureaucracy of trying to get them processed correctly.

Big problem with the regular plan is preventive care. Every time you go to the doctor they give you that crazy stare of "they have to go cover you. It's the law." Then you have to spend ten minutes explaining the plan to them. My wife has a auto immune disease. She has had it since iv'e been here and I have never had a problem as far as being covered and getting what is needed. We do have instances where we were billed and then she has to call and get things straightened out. Every other plan I have ever had out side the regular plan when everything is covered we still had issues. Choice plus is a rip off. But my buddy at DAL pay's more than the choice plus so I maybe ALPA can work on that. It is nice though that my pay stub has zero premium's deducted from my pay check though.

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And then on the NEC, we are industry-lagging on the company contribution rate and severely lagging in our career retirement fund accumulation. Given our career-average hourly/TFP rates compared to the typical lifetime progression at our peer Big Three airlines, FedEx, and UPS, we would need a dramatically better NEC contribution than them to pull even in terms of end-of-career retirement fund amounts with them. I'm not a tax expert, so even dramatically better rates may not be able to do it once IRS limitations are taken into account (not sure).

Couple of things here. I got into the flying gig in the late 90's when pensions were the norm. 401k's for pilots were still not as prevalent as they are now. My dad lost his pension when his company when out out business. PBGC took it over for pennies on the dollar. After 9/11 almost 75% of the total seats flying were under chapter 11 protection. Pretty ugly times through that decade. Seven out of the nine largest passenger airlines in the US had defined benefit plans offered to their pilots. Today it's either gone or frozen. I knew guys that retired early from Delta to get at least half their pension in cash. The other was wiped clean in chapter 11. Horrible to say the least. ALL the airline managers seemed to conspire that pilot pensions needed to go. Some were able to negotiate equity. Some created a secondary fund out side of the 401k. Some were able have the pensions frozen like NW guys and American. Most offer a defined contribution now. Only the last two collective bargaining cycles that we have had as an industry, we've been able to get some of that back. Up to maybe 2014/15, the industry has sucked as far as making real gains in this arena. SWA obviously has never had a defined benefit plan. The only way we could catch up is to get one. IRS limits on high income earners like ourselves prohibits stuffing our retirement plans. So we may have to get creative. I leave that to SWAPA EF&A to figure out as well as the new young guys that come along. Pensions here would take a long tedious education campaign. Too late now in this late cycle on negotiations. I have also noticed none of the other three legacies have even attempted yet to make it a front and center issue. But now is the time to start talking about it for the next go around.

Since 2008 the largest nine airlines now are the largest four in market share. That brings stability to the industry. Excess cash flows over the last decade have given airlines the ability to pay down billions in debt. Pay dividends, stock buy backs, etc. Pensions as a percentage of the total long term liabilities are much smaller than it was pre 9/11. And its getting smaller as retired guys pass away. Single digit operating margins have given away to the mid teens. That's pretty damn good for a capital intensive industry. Look at the melt down. Net loss was only 200 million for the quarter. WE still made 723 million for the year. 2019 we made 2.3 billion. When the company is firing on all cylinders, this place mints money. It paid off three billion in debt in 2022. Like I said I leave it to the EF&A guys to crunch the numbers but it seems to me affordable.