I think you had the perfect storm. Starting in 2000 you had a normal cyclical downturn leading to the first losses in years at the majors. Then you throw in 9/11, where revenue is 0 for a week and severely cut for months. If not for the federal government's intervention, there probably would have been several bankruptcys early on. Then you have pension funds, that because of the market crash end up being severely underfunded which trigger massive "catch-up contributions" (of course SWA did not have that problem). We are talking mandatory contributions in the hundreds of millions here, right when the carriers were burning through cash like never before. It sure was ugly.