Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
American has such an expansive and complete network that if they merge with anyone other than US, there will have to divest to avoid monopolistic pricing power in the resulting markets.
The DOT only cares about slot restricted markets, and in particular NYC. The only carrier AA could realistically merge with that
might require a small divestiture of slots would be jetblue.
The price for Delta to buy AA as a whole is much more than the value Delta ultimately wants from AA (MIA/DFW).