The question of subsidies is a pretty difficult one. The US carriers do work closely together with european legacy carriers, all of whom were government owned just a few years ago and many of which have still at least half their fleet bought by their country, like for example lufthansa, air france or KLM, not to mention outright government owned airlines like South African, Air Namibia, Malaysian etc. All of whom receive substantial subsidies as well. And of course several legacy carriers are either now part-owned by one of the dreaded ME carriers or work very closely with them. For example british airways and Iberia's parent company has a major shareholder in Qatar Airways, Qantas works very closely with Emirates, Air Berlin is financed by Abu Dhabi and all chinese carriers are basically government entities.

On the other hand the construct of chapter 11 is very unique and allows easy restructuring and getting rid of unwanted, old contracts and could be seen as an organizational subsidy. See for example the fate of the pension systems that used to exist in the US carriers.

As someone who is dependent on gulf state money, but enjoys a much better labour protection than US employees will ever dream of, i can see several sides of the argument.