Pan Am to Pay Ex-Workers After 15 Years

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4204432.html

Sept. 21, 2006, 1:13PM
Pan Am to Pay Ex-Workers After 15 Years

By VINNEE TONG AP Business Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

NEW YORK — In the 15 years since Pan American World Airways shut down, Anthony La Pera had assumed he would never get paid for his leftover wages and accrued vacation. But La Pera and another 15,000 former employees can expect to open their mailboxes one day this December and find that a check has arrived, marking the end of the liquidation of an iconic airline.

In July, a federal bankruptcy judge authorized the Pan Am Corp. to distribute the money it had secured in a settlement with the government of Libya. Sending out those checks marks the end of a long process of winding down Pan Am.

"This is about as final as it can get," said Walter Curchack of the law firm Loeb & Loeb, which helped negotiate the settlement agreement on behalf of Pan Am.

The defunct Pan Am, which started in 1927 and helped create what was then a new industry, shut down on Dec. 4, 1991, after declaring bankruptcy in January of that year. Among the last, fatal blows it suffered was the 1988 bombing of Flight 103, a now infamous attack that ended with 270 dead when a bomb exploded on board as the plane flew over Lockerbie, Scotland.

In 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing and agreed to pay restitution to the victims. Pan Am's payments come from a separate settlement of a lawsuit its insurers brought against the Libyan government.

The 68-year-old La Pera and other former employees recently received notices from Wells Fargo & Co., which is coordinating the distribution of approximately 43 percent of Pan Am's settlement money to former employees. Those who are eligible will get between 5 percent and 6 percent of what they were owed when the airline shut down in 1991.

For La Pera, that means he will get a check in the range of $1,250 to $1,500, given that he was owed between $25,000 to $30,000 for accrued vacation and back pay.

FULL story at link above.