WW only has to make good the deficit IF he closes the pension fund NOW. The fund itself, now closed to new members, does not "mature" for another 30 to 40 years. Who can say what investment returns will be over such a period? If they are bad enough to make NAPS, the closed fund, umworkable then I suggest capitalism as an economic organising principle will be dead.
Indeed, it is widely recognised that the current pensions "crisis" is very artificially induced. If another government wins the next election and restores the dividend tax credit to pensions so notoriously stolen by Gordon Brown when Labour came to power (forget "NEW Labour" - as we've seen, its tax and spend all the way), then the outlook for pensions changes exponentially, as it would if the FRS 17 funding requirement was altered, i.e. companies did not have to continually look at an immediate snapshot of their pension liability and put that immediate snapshot against their balance sheet as a debt. Over time in the historic model of pension provision in the UK, the liabilities and assets of a fund evened out over the investment cycle. FRS 17 has forced an artificial crisis in many ways by creating an immediate "debt" on its balance sheet that a company in reality is NOT immediately called upon to pay, unless, of course, it voluntarily shuts down.
So, no, I dont accept your logic one bit. BA CAN afford to pay its existing pension liabilities, it just doesn't want to. It chooses instead to try and rip-off its employees and work them on the principle "fly till you die" - average life expectancy for a longhaul pilot retiring at 65 - 18 MONTHS - some retirement eh?! That'll fix the problem all by itself!
I re-iterate: there is going to be a strike the likes of which UK aviation has'nt seen for years. If anyone else thinks they'll win out at our expense by it, they must be deluding themselves. See previous post about the "race to the bottom".