TheBOSman

My only complaint is the booking fees US charges and the change fees . Otherwise, I think the US award chart to Asia is actually better. Maybe I should start building my US Airways balances up to get the *A F trip I want to take before they join OW. As much as I'd prefer AA and US to stay separate, Parker and US look like they are lining the ducks up much better this time. Seems they learned from the attempt at DL. And this likely wouldn't be the end of the world as well. For me personally, the extra US service from BOS would be nice, as they have many more destinations out of BOS than AA does now.

sts603

Thanks. I mean I am anti-merger. But I don't think that merger will be all bad. Most of us who aren't in MIA, ORD or DFW struggle routinely with AA's route system domestically - even those of us in cornerstone NYC. I am also a US Silver for the Shuttle flights but do resort to them for other East Coast hops as well. And its not like there aren't things that US does better than AA (booze quality for starters).

JDiver

Amazing. Particularly while we observe HP took over US in 2005, and the East-West divide is s=nearly as strong as ever. Not to mention the recent recall of the "US" FA president (March 23) and union's rejection of what would have been the first contract approved since the merger (March 30).

If AMR unions want to skirmish, they will certainly get that option with the HP and US unions infighting after seven years to get it together.

"Rising water will lift all boats" - What is that sucking, drain-like sound?

rosemore

Sounds like LTG and LTP may be lost especially since I don't think US Air has a LTP.

sts603

Top elites exempt though I believe...

http://www.usairways.com/en-US/divid.../benefits.html

Furthermore, as a general proposition - as dumb as US is at times - I also thinks that US knows that they are taking over a larger airline with a more lucrative and deep elite base. I think assuming that the combined program will look exactly like DM is a mistake. I do think that benefits will fall more in line with DL and UA but I think AA would head there on its own as well.

TheBOSman

Indeed, now we will have an East (US)-West (HP)-Central (AA) divide. That is my biggest concern with this, the union infighting that already exists at US. Now put in a union bigger than both of them combined. That I could see getting ugly. I wonder what the US/HP unions think of this?

ndhapple

Agreed. I have no idea why AA's unions are convinced they would get a better deal with Doug Parker than with AA's current management if they've been paying any attention to the running gun battles between US Air East and West.

Also, to that point, shouldn't US Air attempt to complete one merger before embarking on another? This feels like something Frank Lorenzo would have done back when he was trying to turn Texas International into something (acquiring Eastern, Continental, People's Express) without any idea of how to make it all work.

wrp96

When you have a mess in your own house, it's kind of stupid to think that you can solve that mess by buying a bigger house with an even bigger mess existing in that house.

opus2002

Can one book a flight from JFK to HKG on F for 121,500 miles (135,000 less 10% for having an AA credit card)? US Airways is on Star Alliance. We'll be left with using BA miles on One World.

TheBOSman

True. I've only been EXP for a couple of days, I forget that most of the fees no longer apply at the top level elite status.

sts603

There is one consensus here. There is NO WAY that a combined US-AA would be anything but One World. US-AA/UA will never be allowed to be in the same alliance by the DOJ for anti-trust rules. Period. End of story.

N.B. The 10% discount with the AA credit card is capped at 10K miles annually.

iahphx

US's decision to negotiate a merger with AA's unions -- instead of dealing with AMR's management first -- will likely go down in history as one of the most brilliant takeover strategies ever. They obviously learned a lot from their unsuccessful efforts to buy DL.

I'd now put the odds of a US-AA merger at 80%.

I don't think this is bad news for AA flyers. US is already saying they'll move to Dallas and keep the AA name. One thing they'll likely keep almost completely in place is the AAdvantage program. This is a cash cow for AA, and is one of the few (?) areas where AA probably has more expertise than the US management team. Yes, there will be changes, but I wouldn't expect anything earthshaking.

The picture for US frequent flyers seems murkier to me, and there certainly could be losers among the US elites. If you're DM elite, you have a pretty sweet deal with upgrades because the size of the DM pool is relatively small. Now you will get swamped with AA elites. You also will lose access to the excellent Star Alliance for award travel. Oneworld isn't terrible (we're not talking DL and Skyteam here) and it's actually stronger than Star in some places (South America, South Pacific), but it's definitely inferior overall for int'l travellers.

TheBOSman

Also, booking an award on US metal as a US Airways CC cardholder gives a 5k reduction on all award bookings. And, for something pretty unsubstantive, I do like how the US Airways CC looks more than the AAdvantage CCs (I have both).

opus2002

I hope you're right. I am not familiar with using US Airways to book on partner airline. Do you know what the award availability are like?

I was looking at this chart ... I guess it is not too bad like the recent BA award chart re-make. Looks like I'll need 160,000 compared with 125,000 (135,000 - 10,000; thanks for pointing out the cap at 10k miles).
http://www.usairways.com/pv_obj_cach...wardtravel.pdf

brp

For me, there are few things that I need to make whatever happens work. These are the things that make AA my choice. Not sure how things like this would fare in a merger:

1. Ability to buy cheapest tickets and upgrade both domestically and internationally for free (SWU and free domestic)
2. The fabulous service of the EXP desk

Other airlines do not allow #1 (and I don't know much about US Air). It's something that I could see going away, or being reduced. That would be a big deal for me.

Adding more options would not be bad. Losing these few things would.

Cheers.