The proposed marriage of American Airlines and US Airways announced Thursday may be the last in a series of industry mega-mergers, but history suggests combining two big carriers isn't easy.
"The history of airline mergers in the U.S. is good, bad and ugly," says Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at the consulting firm Hudson Crossing. He and many others point to the 2008 union of Delta and Northwest as the best merger in recent memory.
"Delta and Northwest had already been cooperating on a number of different issues," Harteveldt says. "They were members of the same airline alliance, they cooperated on certain international flying; they had a complementary route network; they had similar cultures; they had a similar approach to doing business."
Dealing With Pilot Seniority
Delta hired a former head of Northwest to lead the combined airline. And Daniel Kasper, a consultant at Compass Lexecon says, Delta did something else that was very smart. Pilots from both airlines wanted a deal and Delta told them it wouldn't happen unless they could agree in advance on how they would merge their seniority lists.
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