YVR Cockroach

There's still hope that the UA-US merger will be nixed. Yesterday, Canadian National and Burlington Northern called off their merger (and their routes don't overlap much, probably less than UA's & US's). Also in the past week or two, Worldcom/MCI (it is transportation of voice and data) called off its acquisition of Sprint when the EU added its $0.02 to the Dept. of Justice's view.

I guess we have to say what the official position of the anti-trust folks at the Dept. of Justice is.

I just hope Spector and Santorum aren't bought over by the promises of investing more in the maintenance base at PIT.

dg1

They are close to being swayed. All indications show that the local politicians here have been wined and dined; I just hope that people remember where everyone stands when we're all Untied...


[This message has been edited by dg1 (edited 07-21-2000).]

indogulf

at least Specter has kind of said that he is waiting for something in writng before selling out actually i wouldnt mind UA coming to town if they keep the level of service (# of flights) consistent. US is never going to become a "world" airline so we might as well take what we get.

in the end i think it will work out well for PIT and CLT and maybe not so much so for PHL??

But i guess it's stil lwait and see

BTW - the BN / CN merger failed only b/c of the fiascos of other recent rail mergers. at one time last year there were backups of 6 weeks on some of the rail lines from TX upto the NEast.

[This message has been edited by indogulf (edited 07-21-2000).]

dg1

Indo -- you're very optimistic and the only other person who also feels PHL might be in trouble is Sam Buttrick, an airline analyst from Paine Webber.. Personally I think its only a matter of time there's a economic downturn, and then when UA is trying to cut costs and you and me will be flying the United Sh!ttle for hourly service to Chicago!

indogulf

dg - i wouldnt mind an hourly sh*ttle to anywhere if its on an US airbus

i suppose there is a decent argument that UA would cut service to US hubs before their "own". However as i mentioned in an old post both PIT and CLT are essentially "monopoly" hubs and as such are a major source of revenue from business pax - even in hard economic times. as opposed to markets like ORD, PHL, etc where there are several credible competitiors.

if you look at the levels of US service to PIT over the years they have rarely reduced service even in bad times. so i guess i am def an optomist in this case but i think its based on some pretty decent factors.

worst case - we get to fly the new east coast sh*ittle best case - we get to see something bigger than an A330 / B767 at PIT!

dg1

There's always a silver lining to every cloud