US Airways and American Airlines will merge and the announcement will be made early tomorrow morning.  Doug Parker will be CEO and Tom Horton will be non-executive chairman of the board.

We like that they are merging but we don’t like Tom Horton’s presence in this because even a non-executive chairman wields influence and is able to engage in second guessing a CEO.  Doug Parker will be doing things very differently in this airline and that’s liable to create opportunities to sow dissent.

This will create the world’s largest airline but it won’t be the world’s strongest.  There is a lot of work to be done to be that airline and Delta CEO Richard Anderson is unlikely to make it easy for anyone to topple his airline.

More updates later.

Filed under: Airline News, Mergers and Bankruptcy by ajax
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American Airlines had 14 aircraft delayed on the tarmac at DFW airport as a result of a minor snowfall in the Dallas / Fort Worth area.  9 of these flights were American Eagle flights and 5 were American Airlines flights.

No doubt American Airlines will moan and groan over this and claim the weather precluded them being able to do anything.  Sorry but when you control 3/4ths of the airport terminal capacity and it isn’t a major storm with lightning, you don’t have many excuses here.

The weather was miserable on that day.  Light to medium rain fell until around the noon hour and then snow fell for several hours following that.  The snow fall didn’t accumulate fast and certainly didn’t completely kill visibility.  Delays such as these at DFW airport on the part of American Airlines just doesn’t compute under most circumstances.  It was possible to disembark people and park aircraft.  It’s notable that Christmas Day actually isn’t even a very heavily traveled day.

Filed under: Airline News, Airline Service by ajax
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