[Anonymous]

[greyhawkgeoff]

The US Airways takeover of the Chapter 11 bound American Airlines big beast continues to progress. US have stated they will leave Star and join OneWorld. Is there any hard info out there regarding a date for this or indeed for some combination of the AA + US booking systems? I seem to remember the United/Continental merger was beset with reservation system problems in the early days.
And perhaps more interestingly will the merger bring about service changes, after all AA is decently international in scope and bias while US is far smaller internationally especially in North Atlantic terms. AA have a large and growing fleet of 777’s while US have a smaller group of A330’s.
Will there be new routes such as when AA + BA got their anti trust thru? I seem to remember a BA San Diego route opened up and was publically feted as only possible because of the large number of AA Advantage FFP members residing in that area. US bring domestic centres in Philadelphia, Charlotte and Washington plus Phoenix(ex America West) to the party, what can we hope for?

[cbroo79]

Once the stupid pending lawsuit by the US DoJ and some local state AG’s is resolved we the flying public will hopefully see some additional competition to the big two, DL and UA. The combo of US being very strong on continental USA especially on the east coast with the strong international AA (which is very weak domestically) will give us more and surely competive alternatives to Europe and across the Pacific. I expect an increase of AA style 777-300ER for international. As AA and US have virtually no overlap in their route network, the existing gateways will become better connected if the merger is approved. Hopefully soon!

[IanFromHKG]

Take a look at this thread:

http://www.businesstraveller.com/discussion/topic/AA-US-merger-any-news

Still no hard news, although one update is that the court date has been set for 25 November.

[greyhawkgeoff]

I have been speaking to a US Airways captain, who offers the unattributable opinion (of course) that there are conversations going on behind closed doors to resolve this court action before it goes to court. A question of the DOJ being seen to be doing something for the hard pressed American public who love to hate the airlines generally and who feel that the old era of low fares and surplus capacity that reduced most to chapter 11 insolvency was in the wider best interests of the travelling public. Now Delta and others have shown that there is another way, the DOJ having allowed the previous mega mergers has to act. His opinion for what worth is that with a few more crumbs given away the merger will happen, and his peer group are strongly in favor of it for their future job security.

[cbroo79]

@GKing92: thanks for this info. It is truly weird that the DoJ approved the DL/NWA merger despite the unions not being in favor, but holds this one up despite all unions on both sides being for it, this is a democrats DoJ!
Unbelievable!

[GrahamSmith]

Could you discuss this topic in the thread that is linked to by Ian_from_HKG please. Makes sense to keep the discussion all in one place. Thanks.

[cbroo79]

I agree. Maybe the Site Administrator can merge the two?

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