I've been looking at past mergers of Delta & Northwest as a baseline for understanding the situation between SWA and AirTran. Here are the past mergers:

1953 - Chicago & Southern
1972 - Northeast Airlines
1986 - Western Airlines
1991 - Pan Am (Not really a merger; DAL purchased 45% of the company and financed it for several months, but ceased financing in Dec 1991 as Pan Am was inevitably headed toward a second bankruptcy; thousands lost jobs)
2008 - Northwest Airlines (who merged with Republic back in 1986)

In almost all these cases, Delta & Northwest kept the pilots & planes without furloughs or liquidation. Pan Am was a special case because it was almost dead from the start of DAL's financial help.

I guess my point here is that AirTran has been a very profitable company and it would certainly not be in GK's best interest, nor the shareholders, to "liquidate" the acquired company, despite the threat of "all options" being on the table. There's simply too much investment at stake.

http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/a...airtran-1.html

I would suggest to pilots on both sides to be civil to one another because you will be flying together in the 'family' in the future.