If by propping up you mean having to furlough it's employees, dissolving the pensions they worked the last 20 years to accrue, forcing them to merge (for lack of a better way to put it), or just forcing them to shut down completely because they had to file BK, then yeah, they are state funded. But if you mean state funded like free loans, conspicuous business practices, or running an airline like a cruise ship company, a-la NAI (US cruise ship companies are few and far between, and there are even fewer US cruise ship captains, but it didn't used to be that way), then no, that's not what it is.
NAI isn't good for US airlines. From the smallest regional, to the largest mainline. SWA had some ridiculous restrictions placed on them, but NAI get's a free pass? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.