The airlines kept operating their flights while they went through Chapter 11 reorganization. Why would the car makers shut down?
if one files, then there's a few things that happen:
1) The public will lose confidence in that automaker (this is over stated as the public would probably look at it as a good thing since the confidence can't get much lower at this point)
2) The Unions would be broken. This is the big one. Most of the politicians get so much money from these Unions that theyd on't want to allow anything to hurt them.
3) Other manufacturers would pretty much have to follow suit because of the market backlash as well as the union rules.
They wouldn't shut down, but the Unions would be in a serious heap of trouble if they did and that's what everyone was trying to avoid. However, since the Unions refused concessions they may have (hopefully) forced the automakers into Ch11 which will break the Union and the Union will end up worse and weaker than before hand, which is a good thing for everyone involved…. infact I think the Anti-Trust and Union laws in this country are obscene and need to go away, and this Detroit issue is precisely why.
