The PBGC will not pay what was owed to the employee unless the pension was fully funded (not likely given the COVID market crash) and the recipient was retirement eligible at the time of default. The PBGC pays me about 65% of what I would have gotten without my employer defaulting - my pension fund was 86% funded and I was 25 years into my career, so not retirement eligible at the time of default. The other nugget is that PBGC payments are fixed - once you start drawing your pension, they will never go up. Also, the PBGC is not exactly financially robust, either.
