Originally Posted by
millionmiler
If BA eventually gets its wish and merges with AA (which is not a certainty) then BA will become the largest airline in the world but moreover it would be become as much or more an "American" airline as it is a "British" one.
I think you're making the same assumption all the US airline people have been making for the last two decades - that big is beautiful.
One thing I believe you're seeing with BA & Lufthansa in Europe is full service carriers can compete effectively against LCC's by focusing on 1) long haul services where service counts for more and 2) on select business-heavy short haul routes where they can achieve good price premiums based on convenience and service and which feed traffic to the long haul service. If you look, BA seems ot have walked away from everything else, including regional services.
If that model works and you map it to the US, the bigger change may not be nasty Americans swamping the dear old Brits, but from BA radically downsizing AA's US domestic services, putting the premium back in the international services and finally putting a perishing focus on the business that's been sadly lacking, particularly since Carty left.