Some in the media have decided to blame Doug Parker for this development with respect to the Department of Justice lawsuit to stop the merger.  Some like Mitchell Schnurman of the Dallas Morning News for instance.

I believe that is disingenous at best.  Schnurman has been a huge promoter of the merger and Parker to lead the new company.

Did Parker drop the ball?  I do not believe so and here is why:

This announcement has stunned everyone including even those within the government itself.  It caught analysts with decades of experience off guard.  It caught *all* newsmen off guard.  Anyone who could possibly have had an inkling of what was to come has expressed genuine surprise at this development.

So why should Parker be any different?

The truth is that I think that it is possible although highly unlikely that airline attorneys may have gotten a tiny signal from the DoJ but the way Mr. Assistant Attorney General Baer is behaving, I strongly suspect he kept things very secret so he could have his days in the sun.

Parker artfully negotiated all the turns in this deal and, yes, even handled the government deftly.  He had no need to be especially cautious in this deal as the DoJ goes because it defies any logic or precedent that the DoJ would find anything more than the need for givebacks at a single airport:  Reagan National

In fact, I think the way Parker has played this so far indicates he is more than the right man to lead this new company.  He has shown restraint, good humour and a creativity that you just don’t see in most of today’s airline CEOs.

In fact, I’ll go one step farther:  I think Parker has become an airline CEO.  I mean that kind of CEO who operates his business with larger than life personality and a passion that burns.  His zeal for earning a profit is only exceeded by his thrill at being in the airline business.

And it is a lot more than you can say for a lot of other airline CEOs today.

You can bet that Parker has received calls from a wide variety of other airline CEOs commiserating with him on this development because it was both unfair and threatening to the industry as a whole.

Filed under: Airline News, Mergers and Bankruptcy by ajax