Wow... lots of stuff here...
1) US Airways is trying to meet ATSB loan covenents required of it in 6 months... 60 new airbuses, will not solve this problem. 60 new airbuses only add to the cash drain because US Airways will need to spend cash to lease them. Furthermore, they cannot seem to find profitable homes for their first 279 aircraft, let alone 60 more. Finally, 60 aircraft will not be operational by June. Furthermore, almost everybody agrees this industry has too much capacity in terms of aircraft and hubs. Adding 60 more aircraft and some mythical "westward expansion" is opposes the general direction of the industry.
2) This is the "carrot and stick" method of management. The "carrot" (which you may recall never gets reached) is the 60 airbus order. Naturally after further concessions are made, industry conditions would have deteriorated and the 60 aircraft order would have disappeared, and the US Airways employees would all be on USAviation.com talking about how they've been tricked again. Since the carrot did not work, here comes the stick. Do what I want, or I will beat you into submission.
3) Airline asset transfers usually occur in two ways: Bankruptcy court and by the acquirer approaching the acquired. In some instances, there is probably a quiet offering of assets (like PEOPLExpress did to divest itself of Frontier before its demise... I also suspect TWA was talking to folks that they would be willing to cooperate and get acquired... AA took the deal). Hubs have been bought and sold before... Eastern "sold" the Shuttle to Trump, who sold it to US Airways. Eastern also "sold" its PHL hub to Midway I. In both of these cases, aircraft, long-term leases on airport facilities (gates, ticket counters, offices). I suspect other items could go along with such a sale such as rez centers, spare parts/engines, and potentially simulators, even office furniture.
4) US Airways assets are diminishing in value every day... the sooner they are sold, the more they will go for. Furthermore, if UAIR sells assets outside of the BK court, they can (theoretically) redirect those funds into strengthening whatever is left. The problem is that if they sell any part of the company, what is left will hold little value anyway.
We know that PIT as a hub has little value. UAIR is looking for a way out, and nobody except may Ed Beauvais and Project ROAM are considering coming in. Maybe UAIR should consider selling some PIT assets to ROAM. Otherwise, we can see that several hubs with more O/D traffic than PIT have been abandoned over the past few years: Vangaurd at MCI, Midway at RDU, and America West at CMH. While these hubs were not as large as PIT, what it tells me is that three similar cities, with larger O/D traffic bases could not support smaller hubs. Makes things look bad for PIT.
The Shuttle, in my opinion, does hold some value, however not as the Shuttle. If I were interested in acquiring the Shuttle, I would not continue to fly LGA-BOS and LGA-DCA, but rather use the slots/gates/aircraft acquired to operate from LGA, BOS, and DCA to other cities, like NYAir did back in the mid '80's. However, you do have the pesky collateral problem... which would probably require than any funds received by selling the Shuttle go directly to paying off the ATSB loan. This is not the goal, the goal is to increase liquidity to meet ATSB covenents. I am not sure this meets that goal, unless the payback somehow alters the covenents.
That leaves PHL, CLT, and the wholly owneds... And none of these can be sold if US Airways is to survive. PHL is the revenue generator. CLT and Express are the low-cost units of the company. In fact, if PHL or CLT are sold, you can expect to see the rest of mainline wither and die, while the company reoganizes itself as an Express carrier for other airlines (perhaps whoever acquires CLT and/or PHL). This route also has risks in that most industry experts believe the industry is oversubscribed with Small Jet Providers, and point to ACAI as proof. So UAIR competing with the likes of Chautauqua, Mesa, and SkyWest for subcontract work is a dangerous proposition.
Likewise, if they sell the wholly owned Express carriers, its a short term cash boost, but long-term they get saddled with the high-cost portion of the company. Also, the division of the company that the future of the company is currently pinned to is gone... along with the predicted profits of this part of the Group.
5) I find it very interesting that Chip's secret sources didn't tell us this first... Seems to me like everything that Chip tells us doesn't happen, and the things that do happen, such as this leak to the media, Chip does not know about.
So, I am not sure where this leaves US Airways, other than labor takes it in the shorts again, or close-up shop, and try to preserve the value of what is left. If UAIR begins to sell pieces, I would expect the whole company to be sold in pieces. UAIR, and Dr. Bronner specifically, keeps more control over this process if he does it prior to Ch.7. He can attempt to fulfill his fiducery duties to both RSA and UAIR stockholders by selling assets, paying off debts, and distributing whatever is left to shareholders, including RSA (essentially what happens in Ch.7 with the added expense of court supervision and an armada of lawyers). Unfortunately, this would be the worst possible outcome for employees and the non-wholly-owned Express carriers.
Best of luck to all in this very very ugly situation.