Educate yourself before taking a simplistic view of this.
The meme in the press will be high labor costs led to Americans demise when in reality it is management failure. Airlines like Southwest who respect their workers do well. American management refers to its workers as “cost units”.
What you will not read in any of the “in depth” articles on the bankruptcy filing is the fact that American Airlines for years had labor cost advantages over the competition and squandered it.
American Airlines initiated the B-scale. For years, all new pilots hired made half what senior pilots made. That cost advantage was squandered. Did that money go to the shareholders, lower the cost of flying to the public, or grow the airline? No, it went in the pockets of AA management as bonuses.
After 9/11 when every other airline was filing for bankruptcy, the AA pilot labor group took a 23% pay cut to keep AA out of bankruptcy. This was on top of up to a 22% decrease in pay due to schedule cuts. THIS ENTIRE PAY CUT WENT DIRECTLY INTO THE POCKETS OF MANAGEMENT AS BONUSES.
How many Americans would take a 45% pay cut on top of inflation eating away their earnings? Imagine how healthy the economy would be if every government worker had their pay cut by 45% or even 23%. If the GM workers had taken a similar cut, a bailout by taxpayers would have been unnecessary.
What did management do with this cost advantage? They took it as management bonuses. Google - American Airlines management bonus - and read all the stories. This airline was done in by the INCOMPETENCE AND GREED OF ITS MANAGERS.
Every single one of the top 9 airlines in 1990 has since filed bankruptcy at least once since.
With AA saddled with huge legacy costs the others have shed, this was just a matter of time.
Alaska and Southwest are the only major airlines that have avoided bankruptcy, largely because of their vastly different cultures.