Years later, some new jackass comes along, wrecks the company and walks off
with a $1.5 million guaranteed pension after a trivial amount of time.
Meanwhile, the pilots, flight attendants and everybody else who MADE UNITED
WHAT IT WAS are screwed out of their contracted pension.

This is typical union a**hole envy mentality. $1.5M is a bunch of
money, but I'll bet United's run rate is about that much every 5 min.

Try looking at the real killers of the company; those egotistical
union pilots that get $250K + a year for 20 hours of work a month,
Flight Attendants that "play the game" with their sick time and
schedule and ground employees that take an hour and a half to turn
around a plane.

You want to see how a airline can be killed by the employees, take a
close look at Pan Am. United's going down the same path. Blame all
the executives you want, but you need to point fingers at the unions
to assign the real blame. They are the ones running the show.