Bill to Restore Equity in Airline Pilot Pension Benefits Introduced
WASHINGTON – Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the senior Democratic member of the Education and the Workforce Committee, joined a bipartisan group of House members to introduce legislation on Thursday to ensure that airline pilots with pensions administered by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PGBC) are not treated unfairly because of federal aviation requirements.
The Airline Pilot Pension Fairness Act, H.R. 2697, would clarify that airline pilots forced to retire at age 60 because of a federal rule as not retiring early. The bill also prohibits the PBGC from offsetting the increased cost by reducing benefits to other plan beneficiaries.
“Retired airline pilots should receive every dime of the retirement benefits they deserve. It is fundamentally unfair to cut their benefits because federal pension law did not include an appropriate retirement age for pilots,” said Miller.
PBGC is the federal agency charged with insuring private sector defined benefit pension plans. When a pension plan cannot pay promised benefits, the PBGC takes over the plan and pays retirees a monthly benefit up to an annual cap. PBGC reduces benefits for workers who retire before 65 when they calculate benefits. However, until 2007, a Federal Aviation Administration rule forced airline pilots to retire at age 60. As a result, pilots in plans that terminated prior to the rule change have been receiving approximately 35 percent lower benefits since their plans were assumed by the PBGC through no fault of their own.
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