From where I'm sitting, unles you get paid to create companies for other people, then your track record of "creating companies" refers to creating them for yourself.
Which doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me that you know what you're talking about. It probably means that every company you have created has failed. Note: I say this without any personal knowledge of what you have created or what you created them for.
The real issues surrounding United's (apparent-) demise (and every other large corporation in dire straits) has everything to do with the exponentially-increasing cost of providing benefits to large numbers of employees.
Salary, in a nutshell, is a very small part of the equation; it can cost an employer up to three times salary to provide basic benefits (health insurance, pension and retirement benefits, Social Security taxes, sick time, vacation time, etc). It gets even worse when a corporation does business with government (especially at the state level, where pre-determined pension responsibilities fall squarely upon the shoulders of the employer -- this is the cost of doing business with the government or a government agency).
Add to the mix the fact that many (if not most) of today's most costliest employees belong to the "Baby Boom" generation that will soon retire in unprecedented numbers. These are the most expensive employees, taken as a group.
Finally, the largest problem is the new school of management theory which is, sad to say, almost universally divorced from the concept of true economics. Business, these days, is conducted under the aegis of formulaic rote -- not economic reality. I don't know what they are teaching MBA's these days, but it is certainly NOT economics or management.
This really depends on the industry being examined. Some businesses are more labor intensive than others and will spend more on labor and benefits. The airline industry is labor intensive. I've had P&L responsibility for several individual businesses and business units in my career, but I have yet to see anyone spending anything remotely close to three times salary to cover benefits, however generous they may be. In my experience, benefits usually average about 35-40% of salary/wage expense. The companies I derived that average from all offered generous benefit packages.
The airline industry as a whole spends about 35% of revenue on salaries and benefits which represents about 75% of all non-fixed costs. This is why layoffs are always the first strategy for cutting costs in a downturn. Fuel is the second largest expense coming in at about 14-16% of revenue.
It's been a long time since I've been to business school so I can't be sure of what they are teaching these days. You can be assured however, that they are teaching students how to read financial statements and to understand operating expenses.