Originally Posted by
dayone
I'll bet you a dollar.
That's one of the reasons why this one will also have conditions, as AA/US did.
Different airlines and different circumstances. The conditions on AA/US were not "imposed", they were negotiated after the DOJ sued to block the merger. There's lots of case law regarding mergers and anti-trust law involving market concentration and overlap. You can't just ignore that case history and precedents. A merged AS/VX would still be a relative pipsqueak compared to AA/UA/DL/WN. The AA merger made it largest US airline by scheduled passenger miles. The DOJ can't just sue because "there's been too many mergers!" without looking at the specific circumstances and presenting actual rational arguments. They'd get laughed out of court and AS knows it.