Originally Posted by
Kacee
Has AS studied prior mergers and how to avoid a disaster? AA did pretty well with the US merger because they studied the UA/CO merger and thus managed to avoid meltdown.
It would seem they did, as they are following the same process to changeover as AA/US did. Codeshare everything for 3 months and close the schedule on the disappearing airline at the end of that window, then wait for the number of tickets issued on the old stock to dwindle to zero.
They may have bet wrong on what staffing would be needed at which points in the process, but all signs point to AS heavily utilizing knowledge of both the AA/US and UA/CO missteps and successes.
The fact that they already have a (tentative) joint labor agreement with the FAs, when UA only achieved that last year, is also a good sign of them learning from past mergers and prioritizing appropriately.