It seems to me that UAL would have been much better off to have secured the services of the legal team that advised AA during the TWA acquisition. Don't recall the name but they were the best.
These were the very clever attorneys who came up with the plan of forcing TWA to file BK. Not only that, they used the obscure Chapter 11 section 363, rather than the more common section 365.
This provided for the cancellation of Carl Icahn's Karabu Agreement, despite the fact the agreement had specific language in it that prohibited it from being voided by a BK.
They were also able to force the hand of all of TWA's labor groups and make them give up their scope and successorship clauses under great duress. The TWA pilots' lawsuit against the ALPA national union now alleges that ALPA was operating secretly in collusion with the AA pilot groups' APA against the TWA pilot group, in an attempt to win the AA pilots representation. Dispicable if true.
The handy work of AA's legal team allowed AA to pick up TWA for pennies on the dollar while shedding any assets, contracts or liabilities (and ultimately employees) they didn't want. All the while this was accomplished with barriers that effectively blocked any efforts by others to bid competitively against AA for TWA.
No question in my mind that this legal team could craft a bankruptcy for UAL which would have them come out smelling like a rose, at the expense of their employees and creditors and who knows who else. All of this would be unilaterally imposed of course.
I have no idea what Rothschilds did for TWA. Maybe they were the ones who told TWA how to make themselves look broke, so that they and AA could use the failed company defense to get the deal through DOT, DOJ and Congress in a hurry, all with the empty promise of preserving the TWA jobs which have become nothing more than a cushion to protect AA jobs during the furloughs.
Since the UAL management team did not see fit to obtain the services of this very talented legal team that helped AA, I would strongly suggest that UAL's unions track them down and hire them. Rothschild's appeared to be no match for them from what I've seen.