Oh dear, Stilton, I do seem to have upset you so.
The facts are however, that a few rather bright(er) pilots at the major US carriers managed to have a little more foresight than the majority,.
Instead of asking for more, more, more, and buying two new trucks every year along with the odd boat every so often (not to mention changing wives at the same time) they took a rather long look at their respective carrier (and the outlook for US carriers in general)...and decided they didn't like what the saw, and bailed early, when they were offered a sweet cash/incentive deal to do so, taking as much cash as possible.
These folks are doing generally OK now in these more lean times.
The folks you generally refer to are the more, more more crowd who spent every last dime on 'today', believing that the 'company' would provide, seemingly forever.
Hmmm, didn't turn out that way, now did it?
If you want to blame others for calling it for what it was, IE, the inability to use just a little more common sense about the whole pension scenario, then you might right and truly find yourself up the creek, without a nearby paddle.
The PanAmerican 'white hat' era has loooong passed.
Sorry.
