Read the comments. Here's one:
Ugh! I hope you're not displaying your proud work as biz school student with this! I'm not sure a paper like this would not make it out of most junior high classes without a plethora of red marks as even a basic essay. Anyway, your graph heavy, some unexplained guy score of "distress", and basic look at some spreadsheets, does not shed any new light on either Continental Airlines, or any other airline for that matter. If I looked at 2008, I could conclude that mutual fund managers lose 30-50% of my money per year! And 20% of people default on mortgages annually! Your snapshot is bad, your stats are buried and non-comprehensible, and you've reached the same conclusion of "No ******* Sherlock" that almost every analyst who covers airlines has reached. Airlines run more like drug dealers than 3M, heavy on cash, ups and downs, getting people hooked on cheap flights and frequent flier miles, and getting credit from the goons who supply him, the lessors (banks) and credit card mileage holders (banks). While I realize there is no comparative model to this, just as there was none to compare Investment bankers and their derivatives to the guy playing 3-card monty on the subway, you shouldn't try to bury us in spreadsheets and trite analysis and think you've created something great. Your analysis of the obvious isn't obvious itself, and that is the real "distress."
The fact is UAL
was in trouble before this merger.
Its a tough reality to accept, so if this kind of stuff gives you some comfort, then by all means, indulge
