reCAL,
Looks like the committe got to see one of my arguments that you said they were never going to see. Fascinating testimony from a man who was actually advising both companies on the merger, worked for United during the bankruptcy, has run his own airline, and has even advised a labor group during contract negotiations. Yeah, I'm sure the board will ignore his testimony because he screwed up the math on one of his charts 'cuz that never happened in the CAL testimony
. . . . putting these two airlines in a historical context.
They were never comparable airlines in terms of their geographic reach or their footprint or their brand by any traditional metric, whether you take that period in 2000 or 2010 or any time in between.
. . . . it's important that the relative perspectives of both United and Continental on mergers really changed from the really initial discussion in 2006 to 2010, you know, by the time of the 2010 merger, both Continental and United wanted a merger.
But, actually, when you looked at the industry, Continental needed a merger at that point much more than United did.
United was stronger.
It came out of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 stronger, and it had real M&A options that Continental didn't have.
I met Tilton on the second day on the job. I was bringing in Air China executives to meet with United. And I will say from the first minute I met Mr. Tilton -- the first day is probably more accurate -- up until now, he has been on, I think, a single-minded crusade of an industry restructuring and consolidation, and the need for consolidation not just for United, but for the industry. He comes from a very different industry, where actually there is a structure. And there are people -- companies do make money. And his first impression of this industry was it's too fragmented, too much capacity. We need to have a structural change in the industry so that companies can earn a return on invested capital. And that single-minded focus was his overarching objective from day one on the job until after the merger of Continental and United, I guess, it was announced in May of 2010. And that overarching objective drove a lot of the decision making process that you saw at United both in the bankruptcy and after the bankruptcy. He was doing things to facilitate a merger, to make the merger easier in an industry where mergers --
Where mergers have traditionally been difficult, and so he made a lot of decisions to facilitate it.
Starting with the Delta/Northwest merger in 2008, this is -- that is the seminal moment of a structural industry change that was the catalyst for other mergers and for the industry change that I talked earlier about that Mr. Tilton was discussing for decades people had said this industry needed. It's a very different industry today than it was before that merger. And we went from a fragmented industry to a consolidated industry. Standalone strategies, which some people preferred before the Delta/Northwest merger, were really not sustainable.