Believe me, my reaction was probably the same as everyone else’s when I glaced at the WSJ headline about Delta sniffing out the idea of a business deal for AA. “HUH?!” I’m not surprised that Delta, US Airways, and any other equity investment firms are doing their homework on the possibility of buying AA. Any smart businessperson should be looking at all possible scenarios, and my complaints about SkyMiles aside, I think Delta’s executives are among the smartest in the business.
That said, there are a lot of air miles between today and any kind of acquisition of AA by Delta or anyone else. Management has yet to present its own plan of reorganization which it has an exclusive right to do for several months. Then there’s the not so small issue of a Delta purchase of AA’s impact on the Oneworld alliance. The downlow on that – I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hades that British Airways doesn’t find a way to keep AA independent and part of Oneworld as opposed to letting Delta buy the assets they can with the rest being parted out to other airlines. Long story short, no AA, no Oneworld, and I just don’t see it happening.
It’s going to be one heck of an interesting 2012.
Thank you for your article post.Really looking forward to read more. Want more.
and also i hate to spoil the party but i don’t think any of the parties involved in this gives a rats backside about the devaluation of aa points…. ensuring they keep large corporate accounts is far more important than letting us mileage hackers get cheap first class suites on cathay pacific
Absolutely agree with you on this point!
This is a real complacency response. Too hard too imagine the outcome of such a takeover, so assume it won’t happen. I personally expect some real surprises out of this AA bankruptcy, and a takeover by DL or US or AS or B6 or any other number of suitors is not at all out of the question. AA has let itself dwindle into a tiny, irrelevant airline and then plunged itself into bankruptcy way too late. The BK judge is not likely to be as lenient as it was in the CO/DL days when the public mood post 9/11 and… Read more »
Actually, not that hard to imagine various outcomes. I don’t do a lot of commenting on airline business deals for my own reasons but this one was too much to pass up. I just happen to think that the AA-DL option is the least likely of all outcomes.
AA reward miles > Delta… better not happen….
All these miles/pts devaluable is making this earning hobby useless.
Well once all those AA points become Skymiles my blog will get even more useful? đŸ˜‰ Love it!
What if something crazier happens…skyteam and oneworld merge…
Hope you’re right. I’m sitting on 600K AA miles I plan on burning at years end. I know it can note happen that quickly, but I really don’t want AA turning into Delta. US? Maybe….