Although having one larger financially solvent airline may be more benefit to the customer than two financially struggling/Chapter 11/bankrupt airlines.

DL, CO and UA may not exactly be in any of those categories yet, but they're not textbook models of how to operate airlines either. With the airline industry being one of the most capital intensive around, increasing oil prices, low-cost competitors, increasing in-flight standards on long haul to keep up with etc. etc., the rationalization of "full service" carriers may well continue to enable them to cope with the challenges.

I love points as much as everyone, but value more my carrier not going bankrupt before they've flown me safely from A to B.

Whoever Delta "merges" with, hopefully it's not like when Air New Zealand picked up Ansett in 2000 but had to let it go under the following year. A seriously aged fleet, deteriorating maintenance and heavily unionized workforce meant that it was impossible to turn around. Maybe if Singapore Airlines had been allowed to buy it a few years before that, it would still be around and I wouldn't have lost almost half a million points :-( Sure, their rewards program was great and incredibly easy to redeem, but that was a small part of why their business was so financially dire.