Originally Posted by
tuolumne
Well that's certainly unnecessarily harsh. Legacy UAL had nearly 100 3-class widebody aircraft to the deal - no small number. They also brought with them high-revenue business flyers in numbers and spend that CO never had. And let's not forget the most enviable hubs in the industry (in the top business/governmental centers of the country).
Do I agree UAL was in a period of contraction following 9/11? Yes, absolutely, and the numbers prove it. They went through a long painful Ch.11, with management focused on making the company an attractive dance partner, so to say. Much of what Tilton did still angers me to this day. But to insinuate they sat there and did nothing is a bit much - p.s., Ted, a branding overhaul, IPTE, 787/A350 purchases can all be directly attributed to the previous regime.
And they also achieved their end goal, having all but reached a complete merger framework with US right before Smisek called out to Chicago at the 11th hour and asked to start talks again. Either way, Chicago and Tilton won - they had both US and CO asking for a transaction to take place. Without it, CO would have been squeezed to its ultimate demise. They needed UAL more than they needed them, as CrankFlyer post makes abundantly clear in his characterization of CO as having an incomplete route network.
Fair points. In reality however, UA could bring as many high rev business customers as it wanted, the pre merger airline was still not prepared for the future and not running a sustainable business model while CO was, at least to a point.
P.S. was a last ditch effort to remain relevant in a market that AA basically invented (and then reinvented) more than a decade earlier with Flagship Service. Today's P.S. is by no means better than any other product offered on this route.
TED was an answer to Delta's Song (and maybe the US MetroJet to some extent), which at the time offered a superior onboard product, though regardless, all were miserable failures. The early 2000s branding overhaul was necessary to distance UA from its pre 9/11 battleship gray image, but unfortunately was executed too slowly and never fully realized before the merger anyway.
The 2-4-2 IPTE J product was just an unfortunately timed overhaul. On one hand, flat J was an important step forward, though aisle access J stared to become the industry standard shortly after. AA had the same unfortunate timing rolling out the ski slopes shortly before flat J became standard. 787s and A350s yes, also important, but again, by that point the rest of the industry in the US was also already set to go with new wide body orders.
I strongly disagree though that CO would have been squeezed to its demise had it not merged with UA. Post Kellner, Smisek would have I'm sure still been the little snake he is today along with his crew of misfits and ruined a once turned around airline, but CO was set up so well it's difficult to believe even an imbecile like Smisek could have screwed it up too royally. I would argue that instead Tilton would have run UA to its ultimate demise and DL, AA, and CO would have been left picking over the parts they wanted, likely the Pacific network more than anything else.