There's an old saying in business, "No company has ever cut its way to success."

I don't think that's 100% true. Certainly a common strategy we hear from business turn-around experts is to cut unprofitable parts of a business and focus on the parts that do make (better) money. I see that situation in both the small company I work for presently and in the small company my wife worked for 2 years ago. Each company has a division that's consuming significant resources, is unprofitable, and isn't driving additional business towards the parts of the companies that are profitable. The thing is, I don't know that that strategy is reasonable available to airlines. There are impediments to cutting unprofitable routes.

The other form of cutting that does work is reducing operational expenses. But only if you can genuinely reduce systemic costs. Merely shifting costs into another calendar period looks good in the short term but often increases total costs over the long term as you have to make up the difference "with interest" later. E.g., deferred maintenance. Other types of cuts merely shift costs from one category to another. For example, shutting down a maintenance base saves the costs at that base, but how much expansion of staff and facilities needs to occur at other bases to pick up the slack? And what's the financial cost of increased delays/cancellations if closing a base results in longer average time to fix mechanical problems?

I don't see UA or any other airline doing these types of good cutting. I only see them cheapening their product, raising prices, adding new fees, and hoping that mergers will somehow fix the flawed fundamentals.