Given CO's seeming interest in a Channel 9 service at the last DO I'd be far less concerned about Channel 9's survival than the survival of E+.

They code share with QF in the southern Pacific, so there are no "free" upgrades (or any upgrades) on that route

Forget UA, Buy NWA
 

I'm going to beat the drum again for a CO/NWA merger. With the now real possibility that NWA pilots may scuttle the whole DL thing. CO is in the catbird seat to buy out NWA and provide a much simpler path to growth by merger. Strong hubs in Newark, DTW, MSP, and IAH. Eliminate Memphis, and CLE, saving tens of millions PLUS you keep the $200MM+ Tax bennies the State Of Minnesota will give to keep an MSP major presence. Hubs give you solid control points to all major parts of North America plus Europa, Oceania, South America, and Asia. Cultures and FF programs are similar and easier to merge and present a much better scenario vis a vis KEEPING your elite base and the revenue that goes with it. Come on, Larry, Throw a monkey wrench into the DL/NW talks and open a dialog with Steenland. Show them they have better options.

1) No guarantee that the pilots won't destroy a CO/NW deal.
2) Still no real presence on the west coast
3) The NW fleet is older and dirtier than the UA fleet, which is pretty impressive.

Sorry, but I don't see the NW/CO deal as one that is super-great for anyone, though I would personally benefit because I'd still be top tier elite in ST and *A instead of having two *A programs to deal with.

The NWA culture is no where near CO's - NW is anti-customer, from their nickel and dime initiatives, to the hostility employees direct at customers to channel their anger at management. The experience of flying these two airlines couldn't be more opposite.

UA is certainly not culturally aligned with CO, but it offers far more attractive bits and pieces to shore up CO's domestic and international growth - again, not a merger, but rather CO buying UA, and taking the pieces (routes, aircraft, slots, gates, a small handful of decent employees) which make sense and can fuel CO's ability to compete head to head with larger carriers.

A couple of pages back a couple of people asked where UA elites would go if E+ went away. Well, I was elite on AA out of ORD from 1997-2004 before moving to UA... I made 1P in 2005, 1K in 2006, and 1P again last year. I have 26k EQM already thanks to a vacation in Australia upgraded with systemwides, so making 1P again is not a problem. I am also 6'4" and not thin.

This is what I will do if E+ and explus go away domestically. It's evolving the more I read and the more I talk with friends and colleages... but right now:

1. I will fly less revenue trips, especially for leisure. I have 960k miles split between AA/UA.
2. I am Lifetime Gold on AA. I will do a Platinum Challenge this year from July 15 to October 14, and make Platinum through 2/2009 with 20 segments. When I can get exit row in advance, I'll book them, especially for BOS, DCA, and anything west of Denver.
3. JetBlue to LGB/JFK for leisure trips booked well enough in advance to get a 36" aisle. I expect that they'll eventually fly ORD-OAK nonstop as well.
4. I will fly Southwest more for nonstop trips under 700 miles. For work, I already have moved my monthly CHI-BNA RT to Southwest to avoid the CRJ-200s and the ERJ-140s. I'll move the occasional DTW, MCI, IND, CMH and BWI as well, and I'll make A+ by the beginning of 2009.
5. I will think about status on SkyTeam, if that will get me the ability to book exit row at ticketing on DL/NW. I'm thinking about AF Flying Blue, as it's only 15 segments and I can knock that out in three weekends, and the miles might be easier to use intra-Europe than putting them in DL. I already have a Flying Blue account for my Hertz miles and the occasional NW flight to MSP.

Notice that flying UA/CO is not on the list. I'll probably fly them from time to time in 2009 when I can get an exit row on UA and not on AA. But I won't fly them enough to maintain status, and that'll be the end of that.

Continental fans love to trump those secondary cities on those tiny 757s, but United flies into London Heathrow with the Boeing 767, 747 and 777s all offering 3 classes of service. End of story. Sorry, but don't ever neglect the significance of London England.

Alleged three classes of service. United First Class makes me ashamed to be an American. It's an absolute disgrace and I would hope Continental would take steps to improve it.

CO serves London (LGW & LHR) with 757, 767 and 777 service (as of 3/29 when the LHR flights start). Sure, there's no F, but UA's F isn't all that great. And having a 747 on the route isn't really a differentiator to the vast majority of passengers. Most don't know the aircraft until after they get on board. Furthermore, very different markets are being competed for. No reason a combined carrier couldn't choose to continue to offer both the LON service and the smaller cities.

CO doesn't "neglect" the significance of London, but evidently many of our US competitors do "neglect" the significance of the "secondary" cities. CO has capitalized on building a stronger European network and the plan seems to have worked. Meanwhile, UA has bowed to LH and surrendered any meaningful development of European service.

Oh, they sure will. they'll eliminate it.

Id bet the new CO/UA moves towards a lie flat 2-class config for US-EU/S.Am flights while keeping 3-class on a sub fleet, say, all the 744's, for the asia/pacific market where they have the demand for additional J and F capacity.

Lufthansa would love that strategy. Everybody would pay for LH F and the cheap ones fly the American carriers.

But CO has abdicated a lot of service from most major US markets, as well. Indeed, it is really only accurate to say that CO has a strong NYC-EU network; their network is pretty poorly suited to capturing premium traffic from many other major markets. Given the strong O/D traffic ex-EWR and the fact that the bulk of CO's TATL fleet can only be practically deployed from the East Coast to secondary markets, this only makes sense. That UA does not have an NYC hub and has a fleet that is better suited to flying higher-yield trunk routes likely has more to do with their route decisions than any pressure from LH.

And it isn't just TATL flights where CO doesn't compete, they also don't compete on transcons from BOS or WAS. They don't really compete on Asian routes ex-West Coast. Again, all of this makes a great deal of sense, but it doesn't make CO any more attractive to those that live outside of NYC.

And I would suspect this is what CO/UA would do. I wouldn't be surprised to see them expand the number of secondary destinations by replacing some of those 757s that currently fly to places like CDG and LON with something bigger. I sure as heck don't see them shifting them back to domestic routes, unless they decided to use some to compete in the premium transcon market.

Exactly. UA serves plenty of European places out of ORD and IAD, some even out of SFO and LAX. All CO does is EWR and maybe a handful places out of IAH but that are just the big HUBs.

So yes, CO might have more European destinations compared to UA but UA serves more cities in the US nonstop from different places in Europe. Both had advantages but saying Continental is that better in their network strategy is again just half of the story.

UA has ~19 routes across the Atlantic to Europe (FCO, ZRH, 2xMUC, BRU, AMS, 2xCDG, 2xAMS, 5xLON, 4xFRA). CO has ~30 routes across the Atlantic to Europe, the vast majority from EWR. I agree that it is hard to claim one plan is better than the other, and I didn't get in to frequencies or capacity, but UA doesn't serve that many more US cities to Europe than CO does (5 v 2), and most of those 5 only have one or two destinations.