I am sure this isn't an original thought but since I am musing I thought I would put it down for comment.

Given that as of today all three North American *Alliance members are in Bankruptcy protection again wouldn't it be a good time to drastically overhaul routes etc to drastically slash duplication - I know they have said this is what they are doing but I am yet to see alot of evidence of it.

The drastic re-alignment option. United operates all flights solely within the central and western US, US operates all flight solely on the east coast and Air Canada operates all the flights solely in Canada (not too much of a change except for UA's case). Flights between these zones are switched so that flights only go from a carriers 'home zone' to one of the others hubs for connection to code share within zone flights (including transborder to Canada). Hub to Hub flights are split evenly between the carriers. United reduces Atlantic flights to non-stops from the west coast to *hubs in europe, and expands flights to Asia/Pacific and US picks up UA's East Coast to Europe (Star hubs) routes. UA and US use some of the freed up capacity to increase service to Mexico and central america to compete with Mexicana.

Ultimately you would achieve a functional merger of all three in which they do not compete on non hub-hub routes and share sheduling on those routes, and focus their infrastructure and operations in discrete geographic regions with the related savings in things like advertising costs etc.

I know some UA people would scream about pulling out of the European market but I can't help feeling that the only real way for the legacy carriers to move forward and survive is by making the alliances more meaningful - the fact that I have seen some routes where there is a UA and a US flight from A to B that depart within 7 minutes of each other proves they haven't done this yet. And I am not limiting this just to Nth American operations - why does US fly to so many points in UK/Ireland when Britih Midland should be doing it through connections?

Anyway - just my general thoughts. Maybe with the second round of Bankruptcy's the feds might reconsider the US/UA merger again and fix the problem that way.

AndrewCX, you seem to move westward to Oz, so you may not realize that UA's flights across the Atlantic (esp. from the IAD hub) are a source of revenue rather than a drag on UA. The flights are largely full, sometimes overbooked. And there is also plenty of revenue on cargo. I don't know the numbers, but I can't see how forgoing these routes would help UA (and, of course, I have a personal interest in these routes ).

Ok, maybe pulling out altogether is abit drastic however reduction would help by freeing up planes and staff that could be shifted to markets that are currently underserved while keeping full service to Europe with codeshares etc. I have flown UA to europe and enjoyed it but since all three carriers are loosing money the logical place to cut costs in a holistic sense is in duplicated routes / services rather than in cutting service alliance wide....

USair's nearly certain imminent demise will make UA's IAD operation a lot more profitable, particularly to Europe.

Perhaps all the creditors should get together and find a way of actually merging the three airlines. UA and US had the idea before, but now maybe egos have shrunk a bit and they can work out a deal.
They should be able to optimize much more than just the routes, starting with 3x management....

It wasn't an ego issue the first time aroud with UA/US. It was a regulatory issue. It was shot down on antitrust grounds.