Wake T: Your ideas appear to make some sense, and seem in a minority on Pprune whereby at least they use a detached perspective to defend the upper mgmts. of many airlines. Such an outlook is appreciated and refreshing on this forum
. I wish my comments could be more detached and appear less resentful. My main gripe is that retirements were never all kept in separate funds, let alone certain funding contributions falling far short, even when the economy was doing well. What was it really all about, hang-ups with the IRS, SEC, or Congress? Maybe all of them.
As for lump sums, based on everything I've read in the US media in the last few years, only the Delta pilots (at least until until now) were able to take out the entire retirement in one single lump sum.