Eastern Air Lines (1991)

Eastern Air Lines' 1991 liquidation ended a 62-year airline after a brutal labor dispute. Frank Lorenzo's Texas Air Corporation had acquired Eastern, triggering a machinist strike in 1989 that the airline couldn't survive. The strike exposed deeper problems: Eastern had high costs, aging aircraft, and competition from deregulation-era startups. Bankruptcy trustee Martin Shugrue couldn't save the airline. Eastern demonstrated that labor relations failures can be terminal in high-fixed-cost businesses.