I am sure this isn't an original thought but since I am musing I thought I would put it down for comment.

Given that as of today all three North American *Alliance members are in Bankruptcy protection again wouldn't it be a good time to drastically overhaul routes etc to drastically slash duplication - I know they have said this is what they are doing but I am yet to see alot of evidence of it.

The drastic re-alignment option. United operates all flights solely within the central and western US, US operates all flight solely on the east coast and Air Canada operates all the flights solely in Canada (not too much of a change except for UA's case). Flights between these zones are switched so that flights only go from a carriers 'home zone' to one of the others hubs for connection to code share within zone flights (including transborder to Canada). Hub to Hub flights are split evenly between the carriers. United reduces Atlantic flights to non-stops from the west coast to *hubs in europe, and expands flights to Asia/Pacific and US picks up UA's East Coast to Europe (Star hubs) routes. UA and US use some of the freed up capacity to increase service to Mexico and central america to compete with Mexicana.

Ultimately you would achieve a functional merger of all three in which they do not compete on non hub-hub routes and share sheduling on those routes, and focus their infrastructure and operations in discrete geographic regions with the related savings in things like advertising costs etc.

I know some UA people would scream about pulling out of the European market but I can't help feeling that the only real way for the legacy carriers to move forward and survive is by making the alliances more meaningful - the fact that I have seen some routes where there is a UA and a US flight from A to B that depart within 7 minutes of each other proves they haven't done this yet. And I am not limiting this just to Nth American operations - why does US fly to so many points in UK/Ireland when Britih Midland should be doing it through connections?

Anyway - just my general thoughts. Maybe with the second round of Bankruptcy's the feds might reconsider the US/UA merger again and fix the problem that way.