US Airways cancels Delta acquisition

[monsoon]

... Too much overlap just like the failed US/DL deal.

[cooperdawg]

Wouldn't we as consumers want competing markets in almost any corner of the United States in order to not make it exponentially expensive to fly to those regions due to a lack of any competitive flight options? I agree we may see the airline industry dwindle to probably three carriers, but I would think we'd want those carriers to keep competing hubs where possible. Now, what we want and what will happen are two different things. If we had three carriers and no competing hubs, wouldn't it make it very expensive to fly anywhere? If one hub controls The northeast and midwest, one controls the southeast and Texas and one controls the mountain and pacific regions, wouldn't it damage the airline profitability due to a reduction in cross-over track in regards to price to travel?

I would think a better system would be three carriers with hub info as follows...

Carrier A:

New York

Atlanta

Houston

Phoenix

Carrier B:

Philadelphia

Charlotte

Detroit

Denver

Carrier C:

Washington

Dallas

Chicago

Los Angeles

That would give travelers options nationwide on three carriers, thus help keep fares lower. I know this is a simpleton scenario, but is some variation of this what we as consumers would hope to see?

[Delta_USAir]

For US airways it was a win-win situation.

They could have either been the worlds largest airline, or weaken there biggest competitor.

[turbocraig]

Larger airlines always seem to result from every merger I've seen. The net amount of flights of that newly merged airline are likely reduced due to overlap, but there's always another airline out there to pick up the slack (Southwest, jetBlue, AirTran. other legacy carriers). Just about every flight I've been on in the past 3+ years has been packed. It makes me wonder about overcapacity. Not making money is one thing (labor costs, unions, fuel prices), but it seems to me that capacity is about as low as it can/should go. If US/DL merged, that doesn't reduce the amount of people flying. You can't fit 10lbs of sh*t into a 5lb bag.

Reducing capacity in order to raise fares just eliminated lots of people that won't pay to fly. What's the net gain there?

[monsoon]

Reducing capacity in order to raise fares just eliminated lots of people that won't pay to fly. What's the net gain there?

[SmellyCat]

For US airways it was a win-win situation.

They could have either been the worlds largest airline, or weaken there biggest competitor.

[turbocraig]

But they're already flying profitably now with the hub structure they currently have, and just posted a $500M profit... and they have lowered lots of fares across the board.

[SmellyCat]

USAir said they needed to eliminate 4 hubs in the merged airline to fly profitably. This need is still there regardless of the status of the merger. It isn't going to happen as long as different airlines own all these hubs.

[atlrvr]

Doug Parker says that he will not persue NW, unless another airline does first.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/business/16654027.htm

He's either an idiot or a genius....the jury is still out IMO.

[monsoon]

^He is now catching a lot of heat for having billions to spend on Delta, but the federal government got stuck with paying for USAir's retirees.

[atlrvr]

He's either an idiot or a genius....the jury is still out IMO.

[SmellyCat]

Or maybe he just he didn't take the rejection from Delta too well.

[monsoon]

He is now also facing a big row from his Pilot's union who are now demanding a huge pay increase since apparently USA has a bunch of money to throw around.