When U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Stephen Mitchell considers US Airways' request for an emergency 23 percent pay cut for workers again this morning, he will face an Alexandria, Va., courtroom divided over the issues of survival and inequality.

	Stephen J. Boitano, Associated Press Bruce Lakefield, US Airways chief executive officer, said he would give up his $425,000 annual salary if he though it would save the airline, but added, "It's a pimple." Click photo for larger image.

US Airways' case -- and the take-home pay for thousands of employees in the Pittsburgh area -- hinges on a few basic questions. Does the bankrupt airline need the temporary pay cut to survive into 2005? Or is the company overreaching, asking workers to make sacrifices that are unnecessary and unfair?

Company executives who take the stand today are expected to make the gloomiest case, arguing that the airline will collapse without the cuts. Union attorneys will grill the executives and try to sway the judge with the fairness debate, arguing that management is not sharing equitably in the cuts.

Today's courtroom drama is the first of two hearings this week that could decide whether the company can cut wages by 23 percent over the next six months and at the same time reject $110 million in pension payments due its flight attendants and machinists.

Friday, US Airways faces the expiration of some $750 million in federally backed loans it is using to operate in bankruptcy. The company is currently trying to extend that arrangement, and a favorable ruling on wage cuts from the judge could help its case.

But Mitchell has made it clear that he will not be "rushed for judgment" and said last week he would weigh the treatment of employees against the airline's need to survive. The company's pay cut request effectively "gores somebody's ox," Mitchell said, and while he wants "to see this airline survive," he also wants to "do what's fair."

The themes of survival and fairness dominated a 5 1/2 hour hearing in Mitchell's courtroom Thursday, ending with the testimony of US Airways Chief Financial Officer Dave Davis, who cataloged the damage being done to the airline by rising fuel prices, a decline in passenger bookings and a slow cash drain.

But labor union lawyers used Davis' testimony to argue that company executives were not making the same sacrifices as employes. Several attorneys noted that managers received 4 percent merit raises in April while seeking $800 million in union concessions. The attorneys also were critical of US Airways' plan to cut the pay of senior executives and managers by 5 percent to 10 percent, worth $45 million. One lawyer said the company's chief executive officer, Bruce Lakefield, who makes $425,000 a year, is taking no pay cut at all. Asked about that during a brief interview Thursday, Lakefield said he would gladly give up his annual salary if it would save the airline.

But, "It's a pimple," he said.

Lakefield noted that he made less than his predecessor, David Siegel, and that he received no bonus or retirement contributions.

"The money does not mean anything to me," he said.

Instead, personal decisions came into play. Lakefield explained that he left retirement in Naples, Fla., to run the Arlington, Va., airline six months ago and did not see his wife for days at a time. "There has to be enough for me to live and to support an extra house," he said.

Lakefield does make less than his counterparts at many of the nation's largest airlines. One of the few exceptions is JetBlue Airways CEO David Neeleman, who was paid $200,000 last year. But Delta Air Lines CEO Gerald Grinstein, who earns $500,000 annually, did agree to forgo his pay for the rest of 2004 -- a cut of about $125,000 -- as Delta struggles to avoid bankruptcy court. Grinstein also cut all management salaries by about 10 percent.

Asked why US Airways did not impose deeper cuts within its management ranks, Davis told the judge that US Airways was losing many executives to low-cost carriers and that a certain level of compensation was required to retain the best talent. Through the first nine months of the year, 208 management workers left US Airways, Davis said, with 20 percent of them going to low-cost carriers.

With lower pay, he said, "That turnover would be even greater."

Some in the courtroom were skeptical.

"I want names," said Teddy Xidas, an official of the flight attendants union, when Davis described the exodus to low-cost carriers.

Xidas said she expected the judge to impose a temporary pay cut and hoped that it would be less than 23 percent. Her union, the Association of Flight Attendants, has given up any hope of negotiating interim cuts outside the court.

"We will just have to take it and suck it up, whatever it is," she said.