Poison Air

Airlines do not deserve a congressional reprieve from their pension promises.

THE LAST TIME you got mad at an airline was probably when you paid good money for a three-hour journey that wound up taking five. You said to yourself: "If these dummies can't deliver on their side of the contract, why shouldn't I just cancel half of my payment?" But then fatalism took over. You knew that if you protested, the airline would blame the delay on the weather, or air traffic control or a freak rotation malfunction in the back wheel of the service cart -- in short, on anybody but itself.

These days the airlines are shifting blame on the subject of pensions. The long-established "legacy" carriers have all made retirement promises to their workers, who agreed to work hard and loyally on the assumption that the promises would be honored. But the airlines treated these commitments as casually as they sometimes seem to treat their flight schedules. They failed to put enough money aside to fund their pensions. Then, when the funding shortfall grew too onerous, United Airlines, US Airways and most recently Delta Air Lines washed their hands of their retirement promises, blaming the workers' hardship on the business climate, the interest rates or the freak efficiency of low-cost carriers that don't have service carts -- in short, on anybody but themselves.

Congress is finalizing legislation that ought to clamp down on this financial abuse. Its premise is that when companies promise a defined benefit to retirees, they should put aside enough cash to fund it. But the airlines consider this outrageous, and they want special exemptions. This week Delta, Northwest and their unions brought more than 300 employees to Congress to denounce the notion that promises should be honored. The two companies' bosses declare that if Congress refuses to let them cheat on pension commitments by underfunding them, they will be forced to cheat on their pension commitments by canceling them. Northwest is threatening to terminate its retirement plans and hand them off to the government-backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., while Delta, which has already axed its pilots' plan, says it would consider handing off the plan covering its other workers as well. Naturally, if that happens, the hardship the workers suffer will be Congress's fault.

The remarkable thing is that some members of Congress are ready to swallow this preposterous claim. Sen. Johnny Isakson

(R-Ga.) is one; Sen. Norm Coleman

(R-Minn.) and Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) are two others. In the House-Senate conference negotiations now concluding, House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has stood up for the common-sense idea that pension promises should be funded, and he's been supported by the Bush administration. But the good guys need to press their case with more determination. A clear statement from President Bush that he will veto any bill that caves to airlines could yet salvage it.