31 replies to this topic

[CLT-Douglas]

What do you think US Airways next step will be if the Delta merger fails to happen? Go at it alone and hope the rest of the majors don't consolidate? Or, would it be too late to go after Northwest in order to break up a DL/NW deal if the Delta creditors think that would be a better solution then a US/DL deal?

[Jimmy Neutron]

CLT-Douglas, on Jan 17 2007, 12:04 PM, said:

What do you think US Airways next step will be if the Delta merger fails to happen? Go at it alone and hope the rest of the majors don't consolidate? Or, would it be too late to go after Northwest in order to break up a DL/NW deal if the Delta creditors think that would be a better solution then a US/DL deal?

How about finishing the first merger and start by treating the employees as assets instead of liabilities...

Without all employees being treated as one this airline with or without Delta is doomed.......

[yvrusfa]

CLT-Douglas....

Good question! One my friends and I were pondering yesterday.

Who knows? My thoughts are that..yes, we should complete our merger first. However, even if the DL deal does happen, nothing will even begin happening outside of the court process until after our May full integraton is complete anyway. So that will be done by then.

I think DP is right, that airlines in BK are the best bet to cut costs etc. That would mean NW. But, NW is a very troubled company, especially as far as Labour/Mgmt. issues are concerned that goes back 40+ years BTW! So, not sure they are a great choice for us. Plus, they don't offer a strong Trans-Atlantic hub location either.

If the merger dance continues without us, then they will have to look at other options and those carriers would most certainly not be in BK. Maybe UAL is a good option? Or they could go after AirTran and some other smaller carrier to beef up market share. No real way to get alot of Int'l presence that way though.

Hard to say. Lets just hope DP has a "plan b" that they can fall back on.
If we get stuck without a dance partner and everone else gets that much larger we will suffer and nonone wants that I doubt....well...except our competition that is!

[Jimmy Neutron]

You better hope that if the merger does go through that you won't be one of the more than 10,000 + employees that loses your job......

[FWAAA]

Jimmy Neutron, on Jan 17 2007, 10:02 AM, said:

You better hope that if the merger does go through that you won't be one of the more than 10,000 + employees that loses your job......

True, but you may be one of more than 10,000 furloughed employees whether or not the merger with DL happens.

How is that? As Southwest and JetBlue and Frontier and Airtran (and all the others) continue to grow and grow and grow, the legacies will probably continue to shrink. Failing to merge with Delta isn't gonna change that.

[gaucho99]

I've been wondering this as well and also was wondering why we chose DL over NW to begin with. NW would be less overlap but I agree there would be a labor mess, plus DL is a better airline overall than NW.

I think the only way DL can avoid the US merger is to merge with NW or somebody because I can't see the creditors taking the stand-alone DL plan over the merger proposal. That would leave us w/o a merger partner, if they go with NW. In any event, I do not think the merger thinking will be done if we fail with DL. I think it is a priority with Doug to hook up with someone. Maybe UA.

[wench1]

Increase the profit sharing that we all were involved with when we gave did our givebacks.

[PHL]

Gangwal's famous quote in the 2000 press conference regarding the US-UA merger: "There is no plan B. We are cingularly comitted to this merger".

Hopefully the current management learned from that.

Ideally, if the merger fails it would make sense to strengthen the current airline. Add more long-haul routes, aquire aircraft, etc.