For those of you targeting the 95% pensionable pay for pilots, can we look at the whole package please? For instance, engineers and ground crew, feel free to tell us how much of your pension you are going to lose if you retire at your current NRA rather than your new one?
I can tell you that with my NRA changing to 65, the pension that I will accrue between now and 55 (my current NRA), will be 62% of what I would have accrued with my current NAPS pension. This is the same for every single pilot in BA. We do have the option to pay extras and hence get a bigger pension, and the option I plan to take, will actually leave me accruing 80% of my current pension from now on. (But I am having to increase my contributions to do this and I have not yet costed the true ratio between extra cost and extra benefit, so I might not opt for this plan after all).
Anyway, without paying extras, the financial hit will be just under £16k per year for me. If any of you want to knock that much off your pensions, and join me, please feel free to do so!
BALPA have done a good job and managed to make it so that the percentage loss to pilots is closer to other workgroups. It does not matter what they have had to tweak to acheive this, you should not be comparing little bits and pieces. What matters is the final percentage loss, and I guarantee that you are not taking the kind of hit that many pilots are taking.
Please feel free to correct me if your pension losses are higher, but I doubt you will.
GS-Alpha.