Originally Posted by
reinballe
Equating the new UA/CO with the Soviet is the perfect analogy. Come to think of it... the Soviet was much better at keeping everyone informed. Often announcing 5-year and 10-year plans that always came out exactly as stated.
One may interpret the silence as "holding back back news" or "CO/UA has not yet made a final decision about all the details".
I still give them the benefit of the doubt, and think they will keep E+ on existing planes... might not have made up their mind about CO metal.
The important question IMO is whether newly deliveries will have E+ or not.
Well, there are only two possibilities:
1. They have not made up their mind yet. If this is the case, my question is: What are they waiting for? E+ has been in place for a decade, and its track record is established. If UaCo had made substantial changes to E+ in anticipation of the merger and were waiting for the data, I could understand waiting. But UaCo hasn't changed anything about E+, not the cost of the buy-up, nor the yearly package, etc.
So what could they possibly be waiting for?
2. They have made up their mind. In this case, if they're keeping E+, I think it's fairly likely they would have made a big announcement in order to gain some positive publicity. Now, maybe their holding this "chit" so they can coincide it with a big negative announcement, so as to blunt the impact of the negative.
But otherwise, the only reason for not saying anything is it's going bye-bye and they want to be totally in control before the hammer comes down...
My gut feeling is E+ goes away and is replaced fleetwide by ELR...that would be the classic CO solution.