Originally Posted by
xliioper
As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20 and they made some assumptions about deal being able to pass regulatory review that did not hold up. If they could redo deal all over again, it probably would've looked a lot more like what UA is doing. I suspect with UA pretty clearly moving financially ahead of AA, it made more sense for B6 to hitch their horse to that wagon rather than continue to pursue some kind of deal with AA.
I think AA underestimated how aggressive the previous DOJ was on anti-trust litigation; there is a good chance with the right amount of "lobbying" they would have been able to get the NEA through under this DOJ. AA needed schedule coordination with B6 to fix AA's JFK feeding problem since they are trying to maintain two sub-par TATL hubs that are geographically too close together and unfortunately the stronger of the two hubs is the one that cannot maintain O/D traffic. B6 pretty much washed their hands of AA the moment the deal got ruled illegal—I think in that relationship AA was potentially the much more desperate partner.
Meanwhile I agree with people upthread that this is in the end a very dressed up slot exchange so that B6 leadership can pretend this is a good deal to its shareholders and live to fight another day. With the new premium lounge, DL is upping its TCON game (even with subpar hard product) and so I think it is worth it for UA to try to re-rejoin the fight at JFK and rub salt in the wound of AA at the same time.