Irrespective of "Eleventh Hour" maneuvering; without an imminent magical rescue by a financial knight, UAL is spiralling into the grave. It's strictly a numbers game until February 28th when Debtor In Possession stipulations come full circle. That is, UAL may not exceed $964 Million in operating losses since the clock was started December 1st, 2002.
Besides the double digit recession, business right now is down as it usually is during the traditional weak Spring travel season. With current projected labor savings of $80 Million per month, the numbers still come up bright red.
If one can imagine that during the entire month of December UAL had lost an average of $22 Million
per day and is today still losing an average of $15 Million
per day then altogether the company has already trashed $877 Million....which leaves only $87 Million left to burn until the deadline.
It is as it was when Braniff, Eastern and PanAm....had simply run out of
cash.
