Just flew a trip with a 61 year old Captain. We weren't out of the alleyway on day one before he started telling me how great it was that he was going to get to work to 65. After all, the mean old company was "sending him packing at 60 with no pension and telling him not to let the door hit him on the ass on the way out". Mind you, the company never had a pension so it's not like he got tricked out of it. So after 23 years with the company and probably at least 15 as a Captain AND a military pension, he expects to make an EXTRA $750K which is all going to be gravy because he wasn't counting on it. He picks up every extra trip he can get because maybe the union might put a stop to that and limit guys to 85 hours of Credit. Never mind they would do this as a means to save MORE guys (myself included) from getting furloughed. After all, we have about 175 guys on the street. He's telling me about how he thinks he might buy a second house in the mountains now, never mind the fact that I had already told him I'm scheduled to get furloughed in the next 3 months. We only had one 2.5 hour leg but he wouldn't stop talking about how he just loves going to work and it's so great he gets 5 more years to enjoy it before retirement. I finally said, "Well, let me tell you about my retirement....Buddy, I am F'ed. I'm 37 and I got my first kid on the way. If we furlough and merge, I know I'm never coming back and expect I'll spend the rest of my days commuting to Asia to do contract work. If we don't, I'll sit on the bottom of the list until the you guys start to retire again (*assuming we don't furlough at a later date). Best case, I upgrade in about 12 years which will be an 18 year upgrade and then my first kid goes to College when I turn 55 which oughta cost about about $400K by then and I don't envision pilot salaries going up. So, enjoy your 2nd "gravy" house, because I'm F-ed". He tries to make me feel better by suggesting maybe some of the old guys might retire at 62 or something like that. I say, "Wait, you're on the top of the food chain. You hold weekends and holidays off and you just told me you're going to waltz out of here with and extra $750K in gravy. Just how many guys are going to walk away from that?". But he keeps blathering away. Eventually I'm reading the USAToday and totally ignoring him but he just keeps going. By the end of the third (and final) day, I was ready to fake a seizure to shut him up.
I don't bitch about the age changing because it was inevitable. Besides, it's ancient history now and it's not worth the aggravation. But old timers, here's a thought...I won't bitch about it if you promise to just keep your enthusiasm of having everyone senior to you gone, thus leaving you an extra 5 years to bask in your "entitled" seniority. The flight attendants and I will continue to pretend to laugh at the dumb jokes you've been telling over and over for the last 10 years and in no time, the four day trip will be over and we can all go our separate ways.
