Why would we want Air Micronesia, for chrissakes? The two endpoint cities in the system are Honolulu and Manila. And there is not even a non-stop between those two cities. You have to connect in Guam with only a 55 minute window OR spend a 24-hour, 55 minute layover in Guam. OR, you can make a 2 connection trip that takes 3 days by going Honolulu to Nagoya, Japan to Guam to Manila. (And, let's not forget you have to get to Honolulu to start the trip.

) Our passengers don't even like having to change planes at DFW or ORD going from IND to OMA!
This sounds like the same kind of story I heard from one of our pilots while NW was in bankruptcy. He had it on good authority that NW was going to be liquidated by the bankruptcy court and that AA already had signed a deal with the court to buy all of NW's trans-Pacific routes. He also knew for a fact that the deal did not include any NW employees except speaker FAs, as needed, and only the minimum number of planes necessary to fly the routes. The bankruptcy court must have reneged on the deal--the b*st*ards!
I think that the real story is that AMR is waiting to see what the anti-trust guys require the merging airlines (regardless of which combo) to divest. I think that AMR is planning to pick up some juicy route authorities without having to do much other than show up with lots of cash which we can do pretty easily these days.