Planes don't fly with hope in the Gas Tank.

Okay, so I've been looking over the Bankruptcy of both Kodak & American Airlines (parent company being AMR).
I've been trying to figure out using game theory if there is a possible way of determining which company is most likely to fail by using sources that are avaliable to the public, so as to avoid any kind of insider trading criminal charges.
What I have found amoung the two companies leading up to the actual filling for chapter 11 is that they both did something same.
First, was that they were heavly in debt, lossing money and spending more money on operations than net income. So, they public mention in the news, that they will doing __________ in order to make the company more profitable or bring down it's cost. To me, this looks like the CEOs are trying to get investors to invest in their company so to make sure the Chief Officers aren't fired.
Second, they start to cut back. The company before it goes into bankruptcy does a last ditch effort of firing employees and cutting back on orders of products it needs to do business. I still can't figure out how this would work in prevent bankrupcy, so don't go betting the bank if you see this one, until you can figure out a good reason.
While i've only back tested this model with a few companies, i'd like to know your thoughts about it, so to improve it.
Cheers.