Originally Posted by
Surge2009
Add to that the efficiencies and synergies created by the combined airline with the millions of dollars of savings (that was used as justification for government approval of the merger), which would lead one to believe that they should be financially stronger and in a position to start trickling down these savings to the customers as well. However - they've done the opposite and imposed larger fees on NWA's customer base and raised fares on lanes that they previously competed with NWA on (which there were many - especially if you lived in a non-hub city). Not to sound like a broken record, but those facts would logicially make one to deduce that they are either mis-managing these savings (and the overall merger), or are just being greedy and sticking it to their customer base and testing the waters to see how much they can get away with.
Since you understand business, you should know that a merger involving two companies with a combined workforce of more than 70,000 employees, flying over 1,000 airplanes, and carrying over 170 million pasengers a year is not completed within 8 months (we are now at the end of June 09 and the merger was executed at the end of October 08). The synergies and efficiencies will take up to 2 - 3 years to be fully realized across the combined company. In the mean time, two shocks have hit the industry (fuel price escalation and a global economic meltdown) which required immediate action. Since you understand business, you should also understand what management has been faced with and the choices they have to make.....