wings396
Veteran
- Aug 20, 2002
- 3,672
- 1,122
Or Delta could just purchase US in order to rid themselves of a pesky competitor, and divest whatever the government requests them to in order to make it happen. Delta would not purchase US with any intentions of using them to compliment their system. I could see them packing up the CLT hub, and reallocating the A/C and flying elsewhere in the country. This would kill 2 birds with one stone by preventing AA to gain any ground by merging with US, and it would eliminate competition for Delta. I know that it sounds far-fetched, but it was the first thing that entered my mind when I heard that DL was "looking" at US.In my opinion, a DL and US merger is unlikely due to anti-trust concerns. The first two anti-trust issues are the Shuttle and then market concentration at slot controlled airports.
I suspect DL's interest in the potential consolidation is a fragmentation of AMR with DL obtaining AA's MIA hub and Latin/South American operation, which would round out DL's network. However, this portion of AA's route network would be very important to US as well.