There are two sides to a balance sheet, income and expenditure. Most US airlines are actually carrying what, in normal times, would be healthy passenger loads. UAL is hovering around eighty percent. What the airline industry is not doing is charging enough for the seats, recently AA was selling tickets at less than half of last years prices. Until the US airline industry stops it's rounds of suicidal competitive ticket give-aways there is no hope for the industry until one or two of the old majors go completely out of business. UAL declaring bankruptcy will not stop it flying. It will just allow UAL to maintain lower ticket prices causing greater damage to the remaining majors. Then we will probably see other majors also declaring Chapter Eleven bankruptcy.
UAL has been blamed by other carriers for a general industry wide increase in labour costs following on from the contracts awarded to it's employees over the last couple of years. The other airlines are now waiting for UAL to declare bankruptcy, slash it's labour costs and then the rest of the airlines will use this cost reduction to force concessions in their own employee groups. Nor will the employee groups of other international airlines be safe from the repercussions of this turmoil in the US, the industry is now too international for that to happen. Cost reductions by the US international carriers will inevitably put ticket price pressure on other international carriers.
What we are seeing here is a situation which is actually, quietly, being wecomed by the management of the US airline industry to abrogate contracts that they were not smart enough to defeat in regular contract negotiations. I will not say there is collusion here but there is certainly a strong common interest in this matter between the airlines.
My cynical prediction would be that after a round of emloyee pay concessions we will see the US airlines raise ticket prices. They will then profit greatly from both sides of the balance sheet. Reduced costs and increased income.
Don't be too gleeful about seeing your opponents damaged in this industry, we should all be very well aware by now that we operate in a spiral pattern. A spiral up or a spiral down. The trick is not to let the spiral down start, which a UAL bankruptcy could easily initiate.