From: Will
Buergey
To all Pension Appeal Supporters:
I wanted to provide you with an update on our petition
delivery efforts in Washington, a copy of the USAIR press release regarding the
airline's unsolicited $8 billion offer for Delta, and a useful weblink.
Due to some late developments, I was not able to accompany
the group delivering our petitions to key congressional leaders. Capt. Wendell Lewis, who spearheaded
this effort from the beginning, has reported excellent response from the
members of congress as they accept our petitions and discuss our pension
benefits.
Two messages are coming out of those meetings. The representatives and senators
generally feel that they were misled by Delta while the company was lobbying
for legislative relief from its pension funding obligations, and that ALPA not
only did not represent the retired pilots, but actually worked against the best
interests of the retired pilots.
Many of the congressmen indicate that ALPA representatives
did not tell them that active pilots would be compensated if the plan were
terminated. They also do not remember either ALPA or Delta indicating that
there was a potential problem with Delta's lump sum obligations that could lead
to termination of the pilot pension plan in spite of the proposed legislative
relief.
We reached a milestone in our fundraising efforts this week,
with 72 additional supporters making contributions the first two days of the
week. Thank you for your efforts
to recruit new supporters.
By now you probably have heard about USAIR's $8 billion
hostile bid for Delta made earlier this morning. We are still analyzing the impact that this offer may have
on our pension preservation efforts, but so far, Delta still is insisting that
the company is not interested in a merger proposal. It seems as though the USAIR offer is targeted directly at
the non-secured creditors, so it will be interesting to see if the creditors
pressure Delta management into accepting the offer.
For those of you helping us contact the President and
members of congress to support our efforts, I have an interesting website to
share with you:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/
If your email program does not recognize the URL as a link,
copy the entire URL and paste it into your Web browser.
For those who want to make donations to help support our
efforts, contributions should be forwarded to, and checks made payable to:
Sapir & Frumkin LLP
399 Knollwood Road; Suite 310
White Plains, NY 10603
Mark the memo line: "Delta Pension Appeal" and the
money will be held in an escrow account to pay our legal expenses.
Thanks again.
Will (Buergey)
