Originally Posted by
FWAAA
You may have read that, but it's not true.
A purchase/merger/combination with UA might find the US government demanding a divestiture of some China authorities and NRT fifth freedoms (due to NW and UA being the dominant China players and the only airlines with Japan fifth freedoms), but a combination with any other US-based airline would not cause a loss of those valuable routes.
Wasn't there talk though of the Northwest name needing to be retained to retain the China and NRT fifth freedom rights? (As others have suggested, a combined DL/NW company could call all Asia routes "Northwest... by Delta." to get around it.)
I guess we can speculate all we want, as we don't know what will happen. There isn't much point in speculating though. We'll find out in time.