Possible US merger with AA?
 

Not seen this reported on this forum, but thought it was worth posting:

http://www.thedeal.com/corporatedeal..._intereste.php

Effectively the CEO of US is suggesting a marriage between US and AA might be a good thing.

it would be, for him!

What's in it for AA? The CLT fortress hub, a northeast shuttle, that's about it. No way is AA looking for a PHX hub where it barely has parity with WN.

The article suggested PAArker could then be heir apparent to AArpey.

I really never saw the sense in a US/AA merger, but with DL's LGA move, its strong presence at JFK, B6 also at JFK and CO at EWR, I guess PHL and CLT as east coast hubs ceding NYC to CO/DL/B6 might make sense instead of vying to be the third fiddle.

I always thought PHX was a low yield hub, and I doubt it could be much of a gateway to Asia. I still would prefer to see a AA/UA merger, but I do think Parker is right, whether it is in the next two years, or next five, there will be more consolidation in the US and globally.

Disater.
I am sure US would like to pack it in, management wise.
US or UA should just go away.
US does not have one worth while route AA would like, plus
what would AA do with the Airbus's.
Aprey iand the AA board are not that dumb.
The only Airline worth merging with would be CO.

Please, God, no.

USAirways is a train wreck on fast forward and repeat.

Chapter 7 is better.

Selfishly, I've got a bunch of US Airways miles (about 15,000) that I limp along with ever since they pulled out of Eugene - barring a merger, any idea what I can do with them? I buy something on their Mall thingie just to keep them from dying?

Wirelessly posted (Iphone.: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

"No way AA/US"

People have been saying that for 20 years.

The people who were saying it 20 years ago were ahead of their time :D

I sort of think DL/NW was the watershed that will force UA/US/AA/CO to go from four to two one way or another. I also think there are some Plan Bs waiting to see what happens with the IB/BA/AA ATI. Unless all the supposed savings and incremental revenue from ATI that ST and *A members are supposedly enjoying are a bunch of hogwash, AA can't just sit back with the status quo.

Gift a one-way upgrade to a friend flying US? costs 15K domestic.

If you can find a way to top it up to 20,000, you could get a star partner redemption within Europe or two intra-Hawaii. At 25,000, you can get a domestic ticket on US, UA, or (soon) CO, or a Star award within S America, availability permitting.

Just a bunch of hot air (I'm being civil) from Parker.

His agitation about merging w DL certainly helped lay the groundwork for the DL/NW deal. Investment Funds and Bankers always like deals since that's the way they make money. Certainly Tilton has been trying to get married for awhile. Maybe UA and US could once again walk down the aisle and create lots of fees for bankers and lawyers.

Agreed. As far as NYC goes, US barely even has a presence at JFK, where AA would probably appreciate having more slots. And US just pretty much gave LGA away to DL.

Plus, AA has worked to (somewhat) standardize their fleet to keep costs down. This includes getting rid of (any day now) the only Airbus metal in AA's fleet. This is the current US fleet (per wiki. not including orders)
93 Airbus 319
73 Airbus 320
50 Airbus 321
11 Airbus 330
67 older model Boeing 737, set to exit service in the next couple f years
37 Boeing 757-200
10 Boeing 767-200ER
25 Embraer 190

The 737's are -300's and -400's so not every enticing. Some of the 757s are capable of long-haul, but AA is already retrofitting some of their 757 fleet for that. AA could use something Embraer size in the fleet, but not sure how that would work with the AA/AE allowances. (Interesting that US went really cheap and configured their 190s to have 99 seats, thereby requiring only 1 FA).

Plus, the PR that goes with the US name...the only positive that's come out of that airline in the past 10-20 years is Captain Sully's impressive Hudson landing.

You meant to say "thereby requiring only two FAs." ;)

+1 word for word. <shudder>