I'm not exactly sure of the specific circumstances of redtailshark's DL-NW mergeritis, but I can assure you that, while for a family the most painful outcome is divorce, for an airline consumer it's a merger, especially if your airline is the one getting gobbled up.

I had my own "red tail" experience with this over 8 years ago when AA "acquired" TWA. Of course, those circumstances were pretty different, in that AA swallowed TWA whole, chewed on it a little bit, and then spit it out in partially masticated bits.

It was ugly. And for all of us TWA loyalists it was extremely depressing. Yes, TWA was a completely broke airline that had last made money 12 years earlier, but it was our airline. And we were its star customers.

TWA took care of us and we took care of it. There was something somehow exhilirating about sitting in the faded grandeur of Eero Saarinen's Ambassador's Club at the JFK TWA Flight Center, with the lead paint chips hitting you on the head while you imagined yourself as Cary Grant.

AA was a totally different beast, a cold corporate beast, calculating, tough, mean, efficient, hard-nosed, a no-nonsense drill sergeant to TWA's foolishly romantic employees and customers who would have done anything to save an airline that could not have been saved.

It's no wonder AA survived and TWA didn't.

I'm not as familiar with the back story at NWA, and clearly NWA wasn't quite in the dire straits of TWA, but anytme you lose your comfort zone as one of the special few it's really painful.