Capping off an pretty unstellar three months, American Airlines is cutting between 10,000 and 15,000 and ending its employee pension plan. Union leaders apparently learned the bad news in a meeting today with the airlines top brass to talk jobs, pensions, and benefits after the company went Chapter 11 in November.

This comes after American's parent company, AMR Corp., lost $904 million in December alone and got even more egg on its face by becoming the first airline to be fined off for keeping a plane full of passengers on the tarmac for too long. Predictably, vultures are circling other airlines like Delta and and US Airways are reportedly considering to buy AMR.

But American (unlike its workers) shouldn't feel too gloomy about its bankruptcy. Rivals Delta, US Airways, United Airlines, and Northwest all had bankruptcies of their own this past decade.

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