Big OOPS at Dulles
 

http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/2006/12/15/Navigation/177/211116/Water+cannon+salute+to+retiring+United+Airlines+Bo eing+777+pilot+goes+sadly.html

I'd hate to be the guy who pushed the "foam" button instead of the "water" button. Last I heard, the foam was sucked well into the engines and - obviously - put the fires out so the A/C had to be towed. Foam is also corrosive, so this will require both engines R&R plus a cross-country ferry flight for maintenance. OOPS!

Heh, heh, heh. Maybe the foam was to help cushion the pilot into his retirement. :)

He may need it - airline retirement has been hosed. I know of at least one UAL 747 Captain (30+ years of service) whose retirement check, thanks to the bankruptcy terms, is $1,100/month. No, that's not a mistype.

Which may be less than they were expecting, but is still tons better than most people get.

Pretty sad state for American retirements, then. I think it's revolting, particularly in the face of the obscene pay sports figures get.

Won't go into how UAL mgmt literally stole the employees' retirement funds and transferred the assets to themselves.

+1.

Most people get a coffee mug and a "thanks a lot, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" from some "manager" half their age. We should all be so fortunate as that guy.

No, both Republican honor and Democratic decency indicate that promises by companies should be kept. If management gave them too much, then the company should go belly up and give some other management at another company a chance to do better (Southwest?). But to make a promise and then wiggle out of it is un-manly, unseemly and just plain wrong.

It's no better than if your employer stuck his hand into your 401(k) and decided to remove 1/2 the money.

Sports players earn their money IMO.

If you could fill a stadium of 20,000 (at fifty plus bucks a pop just for nosebleed seats) 3x a week for me i'd gladly pay you what Allen Iverson or whoever else makes too. :)

I thought we were talking about foam? :confused:

Sounds like a Superman thread.

Any union that allows management to control pension assets shouldn't be surprised at the shaft that inevitably comes their way. Heck, these days, any worker who allows their company or their union to control their retirement assets is naive.

Hopefully in all those years of six-figure union-negotiated pay checks, the pilots managed to put a bit away for the future.

-1. To me that's a symptom of our having our priorities upside-down.

RallyJon - not sure what a "superman thread" is, but for what it's worth I had to leave a major airline due to a vision problem. "Only" 16 years of service, but never saw even one of your "...years of six-figure union-negotiated pay checks." We had new-hire pilots eligible for food stamps and their churches were offering to buy toys for the kids of at least one pilot I flew with. Your info is not consistent with reality. I suggest next time you fly somewhere, please drop into the cockpit - we (used to) like that - and let the pilots know you would like them to have a risk-filled 30 years of work and an $1,100 retirement. Do that *before* you take off.

Jim - I thought we were talking about foam, too.

The union screwed them, they paid in and as the ones who had invested got screwed when the unions cut them loose. I also have a friend who is in the same boat:mad:

You are not in favor of a free market economy? Strange considering that you have no doubt significantly benefited from said free market. Pilots are very highly paid afterall.

In a fixed price 'equal value' market(aka a communist state) you'd make the same as(or slightly more than) the cashier at the seven eleven.

I have no problem at all with people making what they're worth. To me a pilot is a valuable commodity, and is worth the money he makes, just as a star shooting guard is a fantastically valuable commodity, and worth every bit he can get. If you can find a job flying around Cher for 450k a year i'd applaud you, i would not deride you as being 'overpaid.'

:)

It was the union who tossed the retired pilots on their a$$es :mad:

Jim, the link does not work.

Actually, M21 I am in favor of a free market. I didn't say that overpaid sports figures weren't raking in the kind of cash that motivates their owners to overpay them, I said I think it's a symptom of upside-down priorities. We're losing jobs overseas, losing education excellence, not funding proper enforcement of our borders, not maintaining a balanced national budget, not properly funding Veterans programs, not providing security for our seaports, hell, can't even operate our seaports ourselves, etc., etc., etc., but we can find the money to pay NBA players an average of over $4Mill per year. That's upside-down priorities in my book.

Point 2: Pilots negotiate contracts - that's free market. We have an obligation to provide the service we are skilled at (safe aircraft operation) with managers who are supposed to be skilled at airline management. I think we do that rather well. I don't think enough of them do their part well.

Point 3: The airline biz is not really "free market" because it is structured - from a management/employee standpoint - to be otherwise. Basic aviation skills and experience are what they are, but training is invariably different from one airline to another, and aircraft types - which require specialized training - may not be the same. I could not take myself from the airline I worked for to another airline in the same way an engineer (or b-ball player, for that matter) can move to another employer because the pay/benefits/management/advancement/whatever is better. When you get hired by an airline you basically have your first 2 or 3 years in which you can still be mobile; after that you're locked in. Period. That is inherently not "free-market" which requires mobility of capital and services from less desirable to more desirable as a feedback and control mechanism.

If your airline goes under or you lose your medical (easy to do), you'd better be young enough because it's time for job retraining.

Unfortunately, the airline biz has basically become the only mass-transportation system in this country. I would suggest that creates a single point of vulnerability which is not good for national security.

I should have been Cher's pilot - you wouldn't believe the pax the airlines get.

Stevepaa - you might have to cut/paste the url. Tried to upload a link but it wouldn't take.

Unions are the most abusive group of people and members ever forced upon the american public. Wonder why jobs are going to other countries???? $45 hr assembly line workers...give me a breaK!!
You make what you are worth and if you don't, shame on you..move on!
Retirement is not an entitlement. Save your money, invest wisely and plan for your future; don't spend like there is no tomorrow.
Unions PI$$ me off. Organized, legalized extortionist!!!

Did it and it works. Why the heck would they think shooting water jets at a plane would be okay, anyhow?


The rest of you can take all your nonsense talk of wages somewhere else. thank you very much

Stevepaa- it's tradition. Don't know where it came from, but they're not shot *at* the plane, but over. Like you see fire boats do.

Ben - semi agree. I've been rather anti-union all my life, but since I don't have time for another detailed typing job (should get back to work) I will tell you that I believe a pilots' association of some kind is essential for safety. Airline managers understand money (sort of), but definitely don't understand safety until they have to pay for an accident. Airlines often ask us to do things that aren't too bright and it's only the pilots' association that maintains a pilot's clout enough to be able to decline an order to do something unsafe.

I got as far as RallyJon's remarks before I HAD to post. Yes, this is a Superman thread.

No RallyJon. The unions did not let management into the pension fund. The bankruptcy judge reached in there. And with all due respect (here, I am offering all the respect that is DUE, if any) to the cretins here who like to comment on how okay it is for corporation to rape employees and consumers, I have this message: If you can post your support here for the theft of retirement funds by corporate interest in order to pay off accounts payable to other corporate interests at the end-of-career expense of dedicated and skilled workers like airline Captains, then let's see it. Let's see you fine upstanding conservative Republicans tell us it's within your value system to reneg, at the last moment before retirement, on a career-long commitment to the workers who built your company.

Let's hear that.

What makes anyone think it's acceptable to leave workers high and dry, who were given a commitment to provide a defined pension? Show me the kind of twisted logic that allows Enron to pay other corporations by raping defined-benefit pension accounts. I'm very interested to hear how this works within your value system and your patriotism.

In the absence of this commitment, I can certainly understand the need to create our own retirement accounts. These 747 Captains hung up their stars after serving their duty in the military, and entered into contracts with the airline industry that included these retirement commitments. In the absence of these commitments, those workers would have created their own accounts. They would not have accepted the pension as a part of the compensation package.

So again.....let's hear about those lofty conservative values and how they allow corporations to rape the men and women who built them.

You have some nice girlie pictures, but it appears you are FOS about who controls retirement accounts.

Nope. Not in the bankruptcy cases I've been seeing these last few years. Neither management nor labor controls those accounts. They are administered by a third party. Please folks, get some of your facts straight.

My buddy told me about the Washing Out it goes back to Air Force pilots, those who couldn't cut it Washed Out and when they retire, they are Washing Out. He did a portrait for one of his buddies, they make a big deal out of the retirement and the washing out is kind a joke they enjoy.

Ben, if workers and their interests irritate you, then go somewhere else. Or educate yourself. But I doubt you will. Companies go belly-up and management gets a pass. You would rather blame the workers, your fellow American citizens. Take a hike.

There are lots of reasons why workers' interests need to be addressed. This is one of them. Safety. There are more. And for those of you who think workers should be prohibited from banding together for the purpose of insisting on respect and recognition........take Sniper under one arm and Faspaste under the other arm and swim to Cuba.

According to my buddy, the union negotiated the pension & health plans out. I'm going by what he said and the notification he received. Had he been able to use the money the union seized for his own retirement fund, a judge wouldn't have stopped it.

Okay. Between bankruptcies, airlines sometimes have to renegotiate expiring union contracts. The visual depiction of this would have the union (workers), pants down, bent over a table while management inserts a length of hot steel in.......oh, nevermind.

At those negotiations, workers give up the Sun, Moon and stars and what they get in return is the ability to perhaps work (subject to layoffs) until the next pants-down experience. Had the union refused to concede the funds in your story, your buddy would be unemployed.

This my friends, is "airline industry deregulation." It's just fascinating that an oligopoly with the economic and national security implications of the airline industry would be opened up as a free-for-all for management to tinker with. Good luck with that. I should start a poll. How many years will it take for the nation to recognize that this industry should not be one of management's playing fields?

foam

Cocktail party?

If you're referring to UAL, that whole process is convoluted. It's different due to the employee "buyout" of the airline that left the employees with lots of liability but no real managerial voice. UAL mgmt flew the airline into the ground then declared bankruptcy by bringing in Tilton who has a history of moving companies into bankruptcy. Lots of the employee retirement and medical benefits were given back as an attempt to keep UAL out of bankruptcy; unfortunately, Tilton's people were both shrewder and less honorable than the employee reps - they took all of the give-backs with full knowledge that the bankruptcy would go forward anyway. The retirement plans were dumped to the PBGC (almost $10 Bill worth) and the managers rewarded themselves by taking, as I recall, 8 percent of all the stock of the reorganized UAL for the top 400 managers. This was much less than the 17 or so percent they initially petitioned the court for.

Side note: Pilots are required to retire by their 60th birthday. The PBGC says "normal" retirement is at age 65 and therefore the pilot retirement payments become discounted as being early even though mandatory. Catch-22

Business typically treat retirement accounts (except executive accounts) as just another asset - they are not kept in a separate trust fund and, therefore, could be used as collateral in borrowing. Fortunately, the carrier I last flew for insisted on independent management of the retirement accounts which really ticked off the airline management but is now saving our butts. Didn't stop the managers from raiding the disability accounts though. Also fortunately for us, we learned by closely tracking the history of the UAL bankruptcy and were able to avoid many of the mis-steps that cost the UAL people so much.

The whole process is nuts. When the stock market was climbing, airline management looked at "over funded" retirement accounts and collateralized them. Later, when the market declined they went whining that they couldn't fund them and dumped them to the PBGC. Bad financial management and not consistent with their fiduciary responsibilities.

land shark

+1 -- I need to get back to work!

Or we can not. :)

I dont see how the two issues are even related.

The gov't does not pay a single athelete a million dollar salary(though they sure tax the living hell out of these guys), these are private or public corporations paying these wages. If you're saying that we should only pay a ballplayer 500k per so that the gov't can massively increase taxes on corporations in order to fund a variety of programs, i would state that before long we'll all be wondering why all the sports teams left america for India and Mexico too.

LOL. ;)

As opposed to the democratic union ideal of being paid 5x the market rate for subpar quality and lazy workers, thereby forcing the company to leave the town/country/city in order to maintain a sustainable profit/loss rate?

I would say that ultimately, neither system is very wise.

With respect, M21, I'm not advocating gov't employment or saying anything about taxes - please reread my post. I'm stating that I see the public's priority as being entertainment, not national security or a healthy economy. The public is getting exactly what they want. Used to be called "bread and circuses".

Management gets a pass?

Sport, they are every bit as out of work and out of luck as the guy on the production floor when they realize that the top corporate dogs fleeced them too.

Middle and lower managers are every bit as screwed as anyone else when a company goes belly up.

I DO love you leftists and your constant attempts to keep the 'classes' at each other's throats though. :eek:

"my buddy said..."

The only truly unimpeachable source. Except for my cousin Eddie...

Ah, i see. What the public percieves as important is skewed.

Well, we do live in a me-first bubble. Thank the baby boomers for that. :(