Originally Posted by
MIA-SAT
Partially true and partially not true. DL as owner of NW and CO can agree to end the deal or the contract can end pursuant to its terms. The fact that DL acquired NW does not allow DL to just breach NW's contracts with CO or anyone else. I don't believe that the DL acquisition of NW was an asset acquisition, which is sometimes used to avoid contracts of the acquired entity. Mergers in themselves don't terminate contracts.
Depends on the contract. Many have "substantial change of ownership" clauses. That's how CO is getting out of their SkyTeam contracts, after all.
And I don't really know what the details are of the bilateral relationship or how frequently they have to renew the deal. If it is an annual thing then there is a chance it may not renew for 2009.