The circumstances and timing of the AMR BK tells anyone on the outside that the move was designed to insure AMR stays AMR.
Precisely. All of this speculation about who will finance (pick one) A. Doug Parker to purchase AMR, B. AMR for DIP financing, C: AMR to exit bk, D: choose your own airline fantasy, is daydreaming.
The reason AMR went into bankruptcy with $4+
billion in the bank is that the money negates the need for Debtor-in-Possession financing which other airlines have needed because they waited too long before admitting the inevitable. We all knew that AMR was going to file bankruptcy. It was just a question of when.
Depending on how much of the $4billion has to be spent to satisfy creditors, the remainder will be used to negate the need for BK exit financing. DL went
into bk with approx. $2.5billion. AMR, I think, plans to come out of bk with that much or as close to it as they can manage. As long as (at least) $1billion is left, there will be no exit financing. Just as Doug has people willing to step up and loan him money, the same people (no doubt) will be willing to loan the money directly to AMR if asked. (Nothing personal, but the people with the money are only looking to make a profit. Who does that for them is of no real consequence--whether it is DP at US or Horton at AMR.)
The two creditor groups who will be hit the worst...airplane lessors and employees. Most of the MD80's that are leased are worth far less than their current lease amounts. The creditors will have no choice except to accept lower lease payments or get an almost worthless pile of aluminum left on their doorstep. This is one of the major benefits of bankruptcy--matching assets to their true value.
The employees--specifically, the pilots, f/as, and mechanics (the unionized folk)--will get it in the shorts. The pilots worse than the others. The main object of this bankruptcy is to drop the Defined Benefit Pension plans. Since the unions have those written into their current contracts, then contract abrogation is the name of the game.
The other gain to the company will be avoiding paying back to the union folks those concessions we made in 2003 and which the company proceeded to squander. After 8 years of $1billion+ salary savings contributed to the company's financial well-being for naught, the company wanted us to accept raises in the 1-3% range stretched out over the length of the next contract.
If they accomplish these things in bankruptcy (which as others have pointed out, there is no recent historical precedent for a failure to screw employees in bk), they will have no need to merge with anyone for any reason.
Oh, to those who are predicting massive pilot furloughs, I'm afraid you are going to be sorely disappointed. First off, AMR has no plans to make massive route cuts. (I feel compelled to add "at this time." Total honesty with the employees has never been the strong suit for AMR executives.) The a/c they plan to get rid of are almost surplus anyway. Most of the 450 a/c on order will be used to
replace existing a/c, not to increase the fleet. AA pilots are an aging group (just as we f/as are
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). Neither group has hired anyone from the outside since 2001. (No, I am not forgetting the side LOA which allowed AA to hire 30 Mandarin speakers while there are still f/as on furlough. In the case of a furlough now, those 30 go first. The company would have to cease the LAX-PEK service.) I'm not sure about pilots, but the
average age of the flight attendants is 50. Unlike the f/as, the pilots reach a mandatory retirement age--whether they can afford to retire or not. A number of our pilots are approaching the magic cutoff age.