Delta To Ask Northwest To The Prom, United And Continental May Drunkenly Hook Up
Here's the state of the airline merger party.
It's pretty much agreed that Delta and Northwest will merge. Yeah we called it. It was tough, too. The fact that Delta hired CEO Richard "Anybody Wanna Buy An Airline?" Anderson, formerly the CEO of Northwest, made it like, really hard to tell which airline they wanted to merge with.
The media is also saying that the Delta/Northwest alliance made United Airlines jealous and insecure, and that airline may rush into sleeping with Continental airlines. Previously, United and Continental had talked about getting serious, but just couldn't figure out where they wanted to live and who would be the boss.
There's also a tragic story behind all this Valentine's airline love, Mr. Merger, Doug "I'm OK to Drive" Parker seems to be left out in cold. Doug attempted a hostile takeover of Delta last year. His bid ultimately failed, and he was arrested for drunk driving a few hours later.
Won't someone find an airline for Doug to love?
Delta-NWA, Continental-United mergers may be close, reports say [USAToday]
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Comments:
With airline mergers, does the bad service multiply or just pile on?
Crap. Being in Minneapolis, I think this sucks. I hate Delta even more than I already hate Northwest. Feh! I guess at this point I can just hope I get to keep my elite status.
@holocron: I'm with you holocron. I hold my nose and fly Northwest with OK-ish results, but I've been avoiding Delta like the plague for years.
The only thing worse would be a merger with US Airways
This will do interesting things to NW/DL/CO code sharing and reciprocal frequent-flyer benefits.
@holocron: I understand what you mean. A few years ago I was flying from Atlanta to Baltimore, and connected in Texas so I could avoid Delta.
Man, if Jet Planes didn't cost so damn much, there'd be a TON of room for competition here. Sadly, an airline isn't a great entrepreneurial business for a regular person. Now, if only I had a spare $6 Billion sitting around in my 401K, then we could crank the dual model airline concept on one of these sad, sad airlines and run it properly. And before you point out failed attempts at this: Delta/Song and United/TED, I want to counter that they couldn't make it work because they were doing it the wrong way. They straddled, and straddling is no good. Not at all.
Alot of my friends and family we really worried about this because the cincinnati delta hub has a pretty big economic impact in the area. the talk now is that they hub is going to stay.
NOOOOOOOOOOO...don't let United make Continental suck like they do.
I said this on FlyerTalk and I'll say it again: the only people who will benefit from this merger are the executives, Board of Directors, bankruptcy consultants and other high-level sponges who were issued toilet paper rolls of the "new" company stock.
Losers will include: anyone who invested (e.g. as part of their retirement plans, life savings, etc.) in the "old" company stock (now totally worthless), employees (more "opportunities" for "streamlining", which mean layoffs and lower wages), and above all, consumers (higher bottom line ticket prices, less frequency of planes but all flying as close to 100% full as possible, degradation of frequent flyer miles and benefits -- less miles or points earned on lower fares, while more fees required to purchase a "free" award ticket).
I hope hope hope hope the combined effort of politicians (who can be bought by lobbyists), unions (who are likely accustomed to being broken and losing on a regular basis now) and consumers (who are usually indifferent) could team up to stop this merger from happening.
Man, oh man do I wish I had a crack squad of supersonic seagulls and a giant aerodynamic bubble with lots of litte harnesses. It would be so nice to not have to deal with these incestuous douchebags anymore.
Also, the picture would have had more impact if you pshopped ceo names on it. Not that I can pshop anything, but it seems like you guys can :)
@TechnoDestructo: My thoughts exactly!
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! Continental, don't do it! You'll regret it!
Oh good, if UA and CO merger we can have BOTH airlines charging fifty bucks to check a second bag.
I don't think NW & DL are a done deal. If it does force consolidation, it will hurt consumers who have been used to flying coast to coast for less than the price of a bus ticket.
Were already seeing fees that add as much as 25% to the base price of a ticket and fuel "surcharges" which are really a way to pad a low base fare. A series of mergers is the last thing the public needs.