Ok, How about paying your pilots their promised retirements?
Uhhhhhh, promised retirements? Come on now. The pensions were, as you know, were stopped in BK. But, the defined benefit program was replaced with a DC plan that is now in each pilot's name. A lot changed after the UA/US/DL BKs, including the law. AA tried to dump the AA pilots frozen pensions, but the Govt doesn't allow that anymore. So, the DC funds try to make up for it.
It's actually a pretty good deal, 15% (UAL is 16% currently) of whatever a pilot makes each month is ADDED to their pay into a retirement account, and the pilot doesn't have to add a dime of his/her own unless they want to add more. Even the profit sharing check has an additional DC fund contribution by the airline. (And the profit sharing check can be added into the DC fund too) That means the Govt set limits per year are met faster, and more money can stay in the pilot's pocket if they don't want to add money themselves.
Oh and DL does pay pensions for the FNWA pilots who didn't lose theirs in the their BK, but instead chose larger pay cuts at the time. Soooo, they do pay pensions for some pilots. The FNWA pilots just now, 5 years after the merger of lists, start getting a DC fund contribution starting Jan 1, 2015. That allowed each side the ability to get close overall. And, the DL side did get money as "debt holders" in the exit of BK, as negotiated by ALPA at the time of BK. Most pilots got money that was immediately invested in the 401Ks (filled up previous years to the max) and then got cash that was taxed also. Even the furloughed pilots got fairly large sums of cash that was invested for them.
Overall, it was terrible the pensions for the DL pilots were stopped (only frozen for the FNWA pilots) in BK (the law has been changed since then), but the DC plan has been a pretty good replacement for the remaining DL and UAL pilots.
Bye Bye---General Lee
