What advantages do you offer for a merger led by US Airways during American’s bankruptcy, as opposed to an American-led merger after American emerges from bankruptcy?

Parker: “One certainty – for whatever reason, part of how American has gotten themselves into this predicament is hoping that the world stands still while they get other problems fixed. And the world doesn’t stand still.* There’s no guarantee, while we’re here today, that we’ll be here a year from now to do this. A lot of things can happen that none of us know.

“But I know in this business that things could go on that could make it so that this deal could never get done. Once everybody is out in it’s a public company and American, okay, let’s merge, nothing can stop at that point a United or Delta from saying why don’t we just go acquire US Airways?

“We’re fiduciaries. If our company’s for sale, it’s for sale, and we’ll sell it to the highest bidder, and American probably wouldn’t win that. That’s the big one – the certainty of getting it done. That could be incredible. That would be obviously a situation where it would be hard for American to ever recover from, if United or Delta got themselves to that size of scale and American had passed on this opportunity.

“On top of that, there are a number of things you can do in bankruptcy that you can’t do outside it. We don’t actually know what all of those are because we haven’t had the chance to go through all of American’s confidential information.

“I’m certain that if we were working together that we would clean up and integrate before we emerge instead of after the fact saying, ‘Gosh, I wish we’d taken care of that in bankruptcy. Because bankruptcy does provide that opportunity, to make sure you’ve got all your contracts where you want them and have the ones the want in place and don’t have the contracts that aren’t economical. That’s what it’s for.

“It’d be a shame to go through that process and then find yourselves wanting to merge while you’re at the state where you hadn’t done that.”

When you talk to bondholders/creditors, what questions do they raise most?


He is not in this for AAer's or his own folks for the matter either!