arcniz
Not quite right, I suspect.
Practically anywhere outside the USA, there is no equivalent to the Chapter-11 system. An airline in US Air's state, or UAL's, would have been shut down prior to now and liquidated.
Add together all airline and steel manufacturer Chapter-11-covered assets in the last 15 years, and the total exceeds 90% of all Chapter-11-related assets. Airlines (and steel manufacturers) seem to be abusing the process. TWA is a very good example of an airline that in recent decades has spent more time in Ch-11 than out.
Ch-11 means that an airline is bankrupt. It cannot pay it's creditors. Ch-11 means that the airline does not have to pay what it owes. The intention of Ch-11 was to avoid the (sometimes very large) costs of liquidation (usually costs such as the drop in value caused by a fire-sale, the personnel costs of finding a new job etc) when the underlying business was essentially healthy but needed a reorganisation of finances. The Ch-11 code is set up to allow some very unpalatable choices to be forced on creditors.
The ATSB system is very similar
What's wrong with that? Well, nothing in principle, but in practice no US major (except SWA...) has an underlying essentially healthy business. And in recent Ch-11 cases, various airlines have fairly openly used the Ch-11 procedures arguably unfairly.
US carriers surely are using Ch-11 and the ATSB fund as anti-competitive measures. They are certainly used to prop up airlines that would otherwise fail. Imagine if an airline with a fatally-flawed business (UAL?) were allowed to fail promptly. Its competitors on various routes would immediately benefit. And most likely it will fail eventually anyway - all that is happening is that others are bearing the pain that should rightly be felt by UAL.
So what? Well, the average US investor in airlines (shareholders via their 401Ks, insurance companies etc) now has an average share-holding period of less than 6 months. No-one invests long-term in US airlines. No-one sane would invest in a large US airline except SWA now.