The last legacy airline to have avoided bankruptcy filed for Chapter 11 earlier this week. Megan McArdle focuses on the company's intractable labor disputes:
[W]hen there are three or four unions–pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and baggage handlers–things get complicated. All of those groups are completely necessary to make sure that the plane gets in the air. If one of them doesn't show up, you lose all the money on every seat.
Those unions are not just trying to get more money out of shareholders, or customers. They're also in competition with each other. A single union that leaves errs on the side of claiming too little value can hope to get some of it back in future negotiations. But if the pilot's union leaves money on the table, it's all too likely to get picked up by the flight attendants. You can finesse this problem when the company's doing well–that's one of the reasons that Southwest has excellent relations with its unions, and why the union troubles didn't emerge at the majors after deregulation. But when times aren't so flush, this dynamic becomes a problem.
(Chart from Jordan Weissman)
The Dish 