Clear Right

My personal total speculation opinion is Delta will emerge as the Surprise owner of AMR. Delta wants AMRs Latin American markets and Miami. To make the deal happen, they will give up Europe assets and slots to USAir and get rid of ORD to make United happy. They will give some New York slots to the Low Cost carriers and maybe some LAX slots as well. They will gain Latin America, the fastest growing economy and travel market in the world. Just my opinion of the surprise outcome. Of course I could be totally wrong.

satpak77

anybody know if AA Advantage program is bigger than Delta's equivalent ?

Imapilot2

This is all fun but..... American will emerge as American........period. Delta emerged as Delta.....NWA as NWA.....United as United......maybe later some will merge but not now with this BK. JMHO

Superpilot92

CAL just out of IAH and EWR, theres more out of the other bases not shown.



AA

http://www.airlineroutemaps.com/USA/...s_mexico.shtml

Columbia

Unfortunately, 40% of those routes belong to XJT.

shiznit

XJT 10AM push out of IAH.... AKA the "Mexican Air Force"

shiznit

Doesn't AA own lots of slots at Heathrow?
Those and the Lat. Am. network are the super valuable pieces.

The domestic hubs are nice, but there has been serious consolidation domestically and it isn't the strength it used to be.

The Oneworld Alliance disintegrating and filling in the Star and Skyteam gaps will mean big things globally in the airline world. It might be necessary to fight off the heavily subsidized UAE/Qatari airlines effectively over the long term.

This is about a LOT more than repainting some planes and doing some SLI's in the US.

Hope the US majors are putting LOTS of effort into the "upper end" of their scope clauses to protect their share of widebody flying. IF there ends up being only two global alliances it will be absolutely crucial to protect your transoceanic flying lest the big boys get whipsawed against each other internationally.

I'm hoping for the best for the AA guys, who knows how this will shake out...

hoserpilot

This is a couple paragraphs from a USA Today article;

AMR's CEO has said the best course for American is to remain independent. But if another airline makes an offer that sounds good to creditors and the bankruptcy judge, then it could make more sense for AMR to simply sell itself.

Wolfe Trahan & Co. analyst Hunter Keay put the chances of AMR emerging from bankruptcy as a stand-alone airline at no better than 20%. He thinks that with Delta's access to borrowing and US Airway's connections to deep-pocketed TPG, there could even be a bidding war for AMR

scambo1

Reading between the lines, AA gets parted out.

DAL/US would be far smarter to come to a consensual agreement (ala slot swap) rather than a bidding war.

All the best to the AA folks and their families.

eaglefly

So the "big three" really become UAL, DAL and US Airways while American Airlines disappears ?

US Airways in its current form or even with some of the scraps of AA, doesn't seem to me likely to become the third mega-carrier. If anything, U would merge with AA and still retain the AA brand, but at that point what would be the point of giving potentially the best tidbits of AA to Delta, thus ensuring the remaining AA/U stew is that much weaker as a competitor to them down the road ?

I suppose anything's possible, but it doesn't add up for me. If anything, I think AA will make a deal with TPG/U to merge AFTER they clear chapter 11 and the AA brand will become brand #3. Perhaps then a strengthening of the One World network. They have 180 days of exclusivity to soldify their business plan. Additionally, you'd think the secured creditors would be more in line with working WITH current AA management, instead of plotting to screw them down the road. The unsecured creditors who have at least some influence include the three unions who could muck up any show that screws them, so that's another reason for delicacy going down the road regarding creditors willingly feeding the circling sharks, only to be caught up as snacks in a feeding frenzy they hadn't planned for.