Well, and because their hands are somewhat tied until October because of the deal they made with the government, and because of Union contracts that are given undue influence over immediate policy as a result of that workforce requirement... I don't think anybody would be choosing to draw this out if they were fully-free to make decisions about it.

That said, UA and the others have a ton of "assets". Government-assigned ones like gates/routes, fixed ones like planes and parts, and human ones like ops specialists, mechanics and everyone else who makes this industry go. UA's assets will never be "valueless" under any scenario except one (impossibly improbable / non-existent one) where COVID means that people never start travelling at 2019 levels ever again. But a lot of that value may or may not exist in a form that can be easily acquired or liquidated by a bankruptcy court. (You can't take an entire corporate workforce and just magically teleport it to other entities without disruption, for example...)

We've all known for years that the airline industry has some structural inefficiencies, legacy baggage, and poor management. Nothing there is new, and nothing is a surprise. But it was always, generally, too big, too important (to lots of sectors of the economy, thus attracting out-weighted government attention and meddling at dozens of levels), and too entrenched to truly disrupt. Will this be the catalyst that opens up true innovation in the airline business?? Who knows... the pessimist in me doubts it. At the end of the day, we're likely going to end up with the same revolving-door of old, questionably-qualified managers, running the same collection of fixed assets and union contracts that we've had for half a century. Only the customer experience will probably change, and not likely for the better.

The question most interesting to me is what happens now, post-consolidation, if one of the "Big 3" does fail, or is forced to permanently abandon a significant portion of those assets?? Does it spur new, innovative "SpaceX-style" competition to snap up some assets that would otherwise be unavailable/unaffordable? Does it entrench the remaining "Huge 2" even deeper as they vulture-up the corpse? Does the rest of the industry pick up regional or specialized pieces, and it rewinds the clock to 1999 with 8 or 10 domestic competitors able to carve out niches and form international (or domestic) alliances? Does it force the government to get involved and re-impose strict regulation? (If 2008 and the PPP fiascos didn't get the government to take the banks out to the woodshed, I doubt this will spur them to take action on the airlines...)

There's opportunity for this to change the face of air travel. There will be winners and losers -- both in terms of companies and job functions. Traveller/Customer behavior will certainly play a role in it -- if we go back to accepting what we've always accepted, then we have no right to complain when nothing ultimately changes. No single voice from the customer end will unilaterally motivate change, but if consumers returning to travel make it clear that airline practices of the last ~decade are no longer going to be tolerated, then structural change will inevitably follow.

Personally, I'd already been debating the utility of 1K for years, given the hassles of dealing with UA. As long as business class fares remain low, for likely the next few years, I fully intend to tell UA where they can shove their recent policies. If I'm the only one, well then, so be it, and I'll decide which game I want to play if/when prices rebound and it's no longer tolerable to just play the field, and vote with my feet.