OK guys/gals, how many US airlines had a plan to pay a pilot an oft-quoted "lump-sum" after 10, 15 or even 20 years? Some major airlines never had it, or most of us somehow never heard about them.

You betcha, even if your company had no lump sum, then this is still supposedly the theoretical cure for saving one's career and survive the industry's worsening condition. Quite simple. Ganz einfach.

Let's look at the main problem here, seen from the perspective of pilots who either were very fortunate (with many years at one airline) or spent most of their careers in various foreign lands, also with no crystal ball. The pilot unions have only themselves to blame, even when TWA's unionized pilots agreed to about a 40% pay cut? And Northwest's 40%, which was a temporary major pay cut, accepted by the pilot group months before their Tentative Agreement passed? Other pilot unions (at early Republic, Flying Tigers etc), even many years ago, agreed to pay cuts worth lots of liquidity to the banks etc. But an airline's demise is still their fault. Even after replacing the union pilots at Continental with much lower paid scabs, who had no minimum standards for pay or benefits, Lorenzo and his wannabes should have created the most successful US airline. The pilots were no longer The Problem.
Maybe the Wall Street Airline whiz kid had no intention of anything, except self-enrichment, plus large crumbs tossed to his legal team. With much lower staff costs at Continental, based on the assumption that previous highers costs were the main problem, it should have become the leading carrier in the later 80s. Negotiating is one thing-but declaring Chapter 11 in '83 in order for the new airline savior to avoid the process, with solid support from the White House, is another thing altogether...after Frankie's stunt, the bankruptcy laws were modified.

Pilots can work for free, but without dedicated, professional management, a Board of Directors which has the integrity to live up to its corporate responsibilities (instead of personal perks), and a truly people-oriented person with his team at the top who leads by example (self-initiated 40% CEO pay cuts, and company stock, would be a start), there is little hope.

In order to be the primary culprits, in such a position of leadership, the Union MECs must also be responsible for hiring and firing CEOs?
Wait just a minute... those Boards of Directors can not be held responsible for the short-, mid- or long-term survival of the airline, can they? Quite true-that would keep labor out of the limelight. Only those "country club pilots" at Delta or wherever who, in many cases, agreed to a 25-39% pay cut, can be held responsible for negligence...if our ever-present Pprune Expert has the only true, crystal-clear Big Picture.

Now let's just pretend that a pilot is divorced and is not cold-hearted, no matter whose fault it was (a lack of healthy income prospects break up many marriages), and he/she wants to live one day's drive from a son or daughter (maybe 2 kids), hoping that a judge will allow frequent visits.

According to some on Pprune, the only intelligent solution for a career, without the benefit of hindsight is to simply fly overseas, apply for the job, study and work on the other side of the Blue Planet, and hoping for the chance to see a young child once or twice during the year-probably no birthdays, Christmas visits, school graduations. As one tries to communicate with a seriously unstable spouse (one ex-wife is called "Crazy M---" by the rest of her family in a southern state). I know this pilot-he lives in Indiana. That's only a ten-hour drive from two of his kids. Children grow up faster than we expect them to.

How about from Southeast Asia or the Middle East? Maybe they have frequent, flexible vacations and lots of days off. Ok, no sweat flying home to the US quite often. If not, simply forget the kids and elderly parents, be far away when they, possibly a brother or sister, become very ill or die. Or don't have any.
Life is so simple for the cold-hearted and superior intellects (to paraphrase H.G. Wells 'minds cool and vast'). Many of us are just too 'dense' to "wake up and smell the coffee", without the benefit of 20-20 hindsight.

Careful now, that is a huge generalisation BYMONEK...! We are a very careful, prudent profession, but not a penny-pinching lot - those are your day-to-day "managers".

411A; you confuse the result (pilots losing pensions) with the cause (financial mismanagement in general). Pilot salaries are not the whole of the costs of the airline - not that they are in consequential - but the huge oil prices rises seen that have clobbered even the most financially sound airlines are but one of the other costs that have caused airlines to look to any and every cost to keep themselves afloat.

Salaries may well have been set highly in the old days, even post dergeulation prior to the emergence of many Southwests in many an airline's backyard, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, and rubbing people's faces in it is neither polite nor gentlemenly behaviour.

The fact is that lower salaries at that time may have helped to some extent, but other costs have risen as well (IT, fuel, GDSs, support, infrastructure), while governmental support has fallen - the effect of that might not be so great on a company's reserves as one might think.

Now the salaries had to fall in today's competitive environment - one cannot argue with that - however the speed and pace of change are not things that have either been forecast by the cleverest brains or your average pilots who left for overseas work.

Remember that not a long time ago pensions were fully funded. Nobody has stolen this cash - things have just not turned out as expected. While executive greed in the US has been shocking as usual in respect of their own compensation, interest rates, stock markets and longevity of pensioners did more than their fair share of help in diminishing the value of the pensions as well.

While nobody does or should expect the US taxpayer to foot the bill (while many other jobs have no such luxury of even a pension) for the pensions shortfall through the PBGC (profit is erroneous as a term - it has assets for the pensions onloaded to it at the moment that have gained on the stockmarket over the year), some sympathy might be nice.

Pilot Pension Woes
 

I'm certainly not one to take any delight in another’s misfortunes but the current pilot pension issue was totally predictable and has being for many years. Basic and simple fact of life: If you work for an employer who chronically looses money in an industry that does the same don't expect them to be able to pony up on obligations down the road. It is just foolish to think that companies that are not making money will suddenly find a pot of gold down the road to pay out past obligations. The US airline industry has never made any real money since it has being deregulated, so where were they going to get money to pay pensions?
The unions easily could have given up wage increases over the years and insisted instead that real cash be diverted into separate funded pension funds. They preferred to bury their heads in the sand and pretend the balls can be kept in the air. I know pilots who decided years back that the payouts they had being promised were unlikely and planned accordingly.
This is not to excuse the idiot managers and the spineless boards of directors that hired certain CEO’s to send them on their way 18 months later with XX millions. However the current situation has being in the making for decades and for a group like the pilots to be surprised about this does not say much for them as a group.

If we put aside 411A's snide commments about "...country club...two trucks...multiple wives..." and recognize them as the tired old sterotypes used by people who just want to take a shot at people they perceive did better than they did, his remarks quoted above are pretty accurate for some pilots.

The fact that people end up mismanaging their finances is hardly reason to "ALERT THE MEDIA". People will largely exhibit human traits and failings.

Their error ( and in the airline business, it's a big one ) was trusting the people they worked for. They demonstrated a bit of naivete by believing what their leaders told them, along with sterotypes and virtual urban legends ( SWA is the current one ). What leads people into this mindset is far too complex to address here but not everyone fits 411A's vision of pilots at Delta or any other major carrier I would bet, he just hopes it does for personal reasons.

I know that at Delta the flt ops management really pumped the new hires full of sunshine in an understandable effort to motivate them which probably left a long-lasting imprint. When I was a 727 captain, I'd get the new FE's who were absolutely beaming about being where they were,and they should have been at the time. They'd fall into the hands of an evil real estate agent in Peachtree City and get qualified for a mortgage based on their SECOND year pay...bad mistake. But as 411A said, there were decades of history to support the claims made by the company that "The sun will never set on the British Empire." It would take an experienced, skeptical, suspicious-minded airline type to dispute these notions; these folks did not fit that description. They were comparatively young, but very bright, guys from the military where they could trust their leaders and no profit motive was involved. This was largely their first foray into the "real world". When I told them they should live in an apartment in Hapeville for their first three years and buy nothing larger than a loaf of bread, they just looked at me like I had two heads.

None of this is to disparage these people ( they are wonderful ) but none of them was a fortuneteller, nor can they be slammed or demeaned now because they weren't.

Life is messy...and let the first of you who hasn't made a mess step forward as a benchmark for us all.

Re-Heat, 20 Driver and many others can state the truth about this business without, eh, conveniently forgetting where much of the problem lies, the corporate leadership, or lack thereof. What is the background required for a typical airline CEO? Here is a hint-not in aviation (at least CO's former CEO Gordon Bethune has a B-757 type-rating and has delivered the plane from the factory). How long typically is an airline CEO's career? Maybe four years? Sure, it is a very strenuous, tough business. But if things don't work out for the CEO, he often receives $70,000 US per month, for life-in addition to company stock.

And the guaranteed pension for staff who were not just responsible for the aircraft, but had extremely valuable cargo or lives in their own hands for 25-30 years?
At least most on this thread choose to avoid cheapshots by way of smug, calloused, self-righteous comments, so beloved by one or two others.