So Typhoon why did you vote to give it up and not just let it ride out the storm? You did a huge disservice to the industry and you know it. Stop trying to protect US AIr and own up to your actions.
I am sure even with the $1.7 B the PBCG got from you they will more than pay out over 40 plus years to the 5000 pilots even if it is only $3000 a month/pilot at a time.
I guess that if you say it enough that might make it true. The USAirways pilots were not given the choice by their MEC on whether to give up their pension or not. The company came in one night, told them that without the pilots giving up the pension they would liquidate the company on the next day (file Chapter 7) and that they would not allow pilot ratification of the decision (which I believe the AAA MEC policy required). The (ALPA) MEC blinked and we are now where we are. Should the MEC have called Siegel's bluff? It's open to debate. I personally think that they should have but the calculation was that if the Chapter 7 threat was legitimate (and ALPA National's advisers thought that it was) that the USAirways pilots would be out of jobs and still have no pension. With termination of the pension, the jobs would be there with at least the hope of restoring some type of retirement.
Now, did the termination of the USAirways pilots pensions open the floodgates to similar actions at other carriers? Probably but don't fool yourself that others wouldn't have tried if they hadn't succeeded at USAirways. There is certainly responsibility there but I just don't see that it was the rank and file pilots at USAirways. My feeling is that it would have been defeated in a vote of the rank and file. If there is responsibility, it is on that (ALPA) MEC that blinked and the ALPA National economic advisers that counselled them to do so and on Duane Woerth who had the authority to refuse to sign the agreement.
Do I detect a trend here?