There are many ways to look at the potential (and quite likely) merger of American Airlines and US Airways. There are the obvious issues everyone is talking about, but take a listen to the less obvious issues. The impact on start up airlines, the alliance impact, the impact on US airlines like Alaska and jetBlue and quite importantly, the impact on the GDS systems. The disruption of such a merger will be not be ripples in a pond. The most clear impact will be on airfares – they will rise even higher. This improved financial situation might be good for airlines as their improved financials might even make them investment options again. But the impact will also have to run through political approval – which is not obvious.
Discussing the situation for nearly 30 minutes we have airline and travel industry analyst Henry Harteveldt from Atmosphere Research and Timothy O’Neill-Dunne, managing partner at T2Impact.
I still do not see how american will benefit from a merger with airways. No fleet commonality, 2nd tier hubs, and after seven years, still no pilot labor agreement at airways.