The bailout can and should be after they declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Save the factories and the jobs, but there is no need to bail out the shareholders or bondholders.

Letting Bieing get to chapter 11 means letting Airbus eat their lunches and the US would never let that happen.

Why? Chapter 11 doesn't mean they stop making or selling planes. The biggest problem would be uncertainty, and that can be dealt with by announcing the intention of bailout immediately after the chapter 11 announcement.

For example GM went through chapter 11 in 2009. This helped their sales rather than hurt it.

Neither should Chapter 7 mean discontinuity for operations.

Pre-packing can be as easily applied to Ch. 7 as 12, if the insolvency court agrees.

But there's no management continuity or parachute in Chapter 7.

I nearly added union agreementd to the sacrifices of Ch. 7, but I'm really not sure if you can be so cavalier with well written agreements like union concessions made in order to enable management to work thru difficulties. At least instinctively I believe that creates a equitable interest.

Which makes me wonder if working out the union position in Chapter 7 wouldn't put the necessary fire under complacent managers.

Mike Milken's first junk bond pitch was a case study of the corruption at Lockheed in the 70s, and how much he made buying their "fallen angel" debt, secure on his knowledge of congressional forgiveness.

The enabler of present day Boeing is the market has long since made implicit guarantees part of their overt modeling and client analysis.

The sickly results include a management insulated from even catastrophic mistakes.