And which employees, no matter how desparate, would sign on for such a thing?

Aside from assuming this is the kind of tactic being used all along, I must admit it was shocking to see in print unofficially ( second hand, from the union rep).

Changing work rules is really the whole basis of this round of proposed cuts. They cut salaries last time, now they're trying to change the rules under which they have to pay the (lower) hourly rates.

If Chapter 7 DOES happen, it would make for a really brief code-share alliance. In fact they would never serve a single UA/US code-shared customer.