jemctag

Heard it last night on the news... Horton's view- open, but not now.

http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/p...erger/649573/1

chanp

A bit different tone from a few months ago.

elitetraveler

Somebody clued him in.

Xero

I would rather see a carrier go out of business than another merger to happen. Customers always lose when it comes to mergers. If you want the airline industry to be strong, just let all the airlines merge and make it one mega airline.

Ambraciot

When did Horton ever say something disparaging about the potential DL bid or a merger with one of AA's partner airlines?

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

I think Horton is signaling that after AA gets through its restructuring activities it will listen to any competitor that has a plausible business plan. Now true DL would have huge DOJ hurdles to clear.

But that is a good year away. A WSJ article today suggested that the labor negotiations are not going as well and more and more likely that AA is going to need to ask a Judge to throw out existing contracts and enforce new ones.

One biggest concern with a USAir acquisition is that the F product will be downgraded. Loss of full meals on flights under three hours and snack meals (which are really a full meal) replaced by the US snack basket.

elitetraveler

The key thing - and Horton alludes to it - is whether or not he wants - it's not his decision on whether merger activity takes place sooner rather than later - in the case of earlier, a hostile bid.

NorthCentralDC3

If a merger did occur, I wouldn't worry about the F product being downgraded. In the three most recent cases, the larger carrier's product was larger preserved for better or worse. When America West acquired US Airways virtually everything about America West disappeared with the exception of the Tempe AZ headquarters. When DL aquired NW, other than a few self bars, there is no sign that NW ever existed. When CO merged with UA, the FC was degraded for CO customers with the larger carriers service (or lack thereof) preserved. If history is a good reference, an America West (US Airway) hostile acquisition of AA occurred, Doug Parker will scrape paint off of his Airbus equipment, add some red, white, and blue stripes, preserve the American Airlines name, and leave the AAdvantage program intact. My personal bet is that a hostile take over attempt won't come without the courts setting aside AA's labor contracts. Unless there it is part of packaged exit from bancruptcy, any takeover attempt will wait for the completion of house cleaning efforts.

FWAAA

Even if AA is able to achieve everything it wants from labor, its labor costs will still be about a billion dollars higher than they would be if AA enjoyed US' labor agreements (with the US workrules, payscales and benefits).

What nobody has yet explained is how a very low-wage airline (US) will combine with a still-higher-wage-even-after-bankruptcy-airline (AA) and make it work. Once AA emerges from Ch 11, you can't easily chop AA's employee wages and benefits any further (short of another Ch 11 filing). The US employees' wages and benefits would probably have to be brought up to AA's wages and benefits, and that would make US very unprofitable.

None of the analysts have even attempted to explain how a marriage between low-wage US and higher-wage AA works. And all the "Wall St" money that supposedly is going to bankroll Parker's takeover of AA will eventually notice the wage and benefit disparity.

elitetraveler

That's because US will likely be left at the alter again.

JDiver

I think one major issue is that full integration of HP and US employees still has not occurred. That merger was in - 2005?! (For grammarians, this is known as "an interrobang" .)

BLI-Flyer

I thought an interrobang was represented with this: ‽ (Will this symbol even come through on FlyerTalk‽)

frebay

who would be possible suitors?

scubadu

Errr... have you been reading any threads around here?

Regards

inlanikai

I think the US domain name registrations which include AA trademarks without AA's objection (to date) is a major tell that this is a handshake merger conditioned on a few outcomes such as US settling their existing merger labor issues and AA resolving their pension issues with the pilots.

Ahhhhh ..... Once again I get to fly on Mohawk Airlines.