I agree with everything except the bold portion here. While we are way behind our peers when it comes to retirement you can easily retire here with a little discipline and planning. Now I know that a lot of our generation doesnt like those words, but it is neccesary regardless of what airline you go to. This being said. Lets assume a pilot comes to JB at 30 and stays until retirement age(unlikely for so many reasons I know, but just go with it). If you max out the allowable 401K amount of $17,5000/yr. Add to that the 8+ thousand that the company matches/adds each year depending on your pay rate. Assume a 6% return and you have millions of dollars when you retire. Around 3 million actually. This assumes that a typical 30 year old would currently have about $50k in retirement accounts upon reaching JB. Assume you live until 85. This gives you 3 million to spend with 240 months to live. That gives you about $12,500 a month to spend. Yes you will get raped on taxes, but you will also continue to gain interest on this money from 65-85 so I am cancelling each of those out. With no debt $12,500/mo in retirement isn't exactly having to rough it. So as you are correct in every other statement you can retire quite comfortably from JB without a military or other retirement as long as you plan. Yes I am aware that going to Delta will make about a 1.2 million difference in the good direction to this number at age 65. I am just stateing some facts here.