I'm an east pilot and I don't even see Phoenix "disappearing". Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the nation, has no airspace conflicts, good weather, and an efficient operation. True, there will be some redundancies with DFW and LAX but we're not going to drastically reduce the number of people we carry in the combined airline. PHL won't be cut in half because it's not slot restricted like JFK, so it's easier to feed the internationals. DCA is a huge money maker and we would jump to expand there but it is slot restricted. This is were the DOT will probably look at during the merger.

The industry has been consolidating for a while now and we're about at our saturation point. I know it's the popular thing to speculate on what bases will "disappear" but Airways already closed LAS and BOS a couple of years ago.

The airline industry as a whole has been setting up for this stretch since deregulation. Excluding extenuating circumstances (spikes in oil, terrorism) I would say the industry should make money for it's investors into the next decade.