The proposed settlement is very interesting. It would be great to see it proposed and signed off on this month.

Aspire Aviation’s proposed settlement
Thus, Aspire Aviation has prepared the following proposed settlement, which will allow US Airways and American to merge so long as the following conditions are met.

-Sell the 18 Washington Reagan slot pairs mentioned in the lawsuit (8 leased via the slot swap with JetBlue plus 10 additional pairs) to JetBlue at a price approved by the US DOJ
-Divest an additional 35 slot pairs to the federal government for the DOT and/or DOJ to redistribute as it sees fit. The combined carrier would hold around 300 slot pairs post-merger ceteris paribus (250 US Airways, 50 American); such a divestiture would keep the merged carrier’s Reagan slot share at roughly the same level as that of pre-merger US Airways, which the DOJ explicitly signed off when it approved the US Airways/Delta slot swap in 2010.
-The merged carrier would be required to sell a Brazil route authority to serve Sao Paulo, along with a Sao Paulo slot pair to any carrier that desires it at a price approved by the DOJ. If no airline decides to purchase the slot pair within one year, the merged carrier would be allowed to keep the slot pair and route authority without penalty and would continue operating to Sao Paulo with the authority and slot pair during the sale period.
-Support legislation to immediately repeal the Wright Amendment versus its current termination date and increase the cap on number of gates allowed to be in use at Dallas Love from 20 to 28.
-Require the merged carrier to make up to 5 gates available at Charlotte’s Concourse B available for use by competing airlines under a common-use scheme. The merged carrier would be allowed to continue using these gates when not requested by other airlines.
-Require the merged carrier to commit to continue operating the following routes non-stop for a duration of at least 5 years from the date of the closing of the merger unless the market gains new non-stop service from a competing carrier and/or the merged carrier fails to record a net profit for six straight quarters.
Phoenix-Honolulu, Kona, Lihue, and Kahului (nearly 15% of the markets involve these four destinations)
St. Thomas-Charlotte, Philadelphia, Miami, and New York John F. Kennedy
St. Croix-Charlotte
-Require the merged carrier to serve at least 76 non-stop destinations from Washington Reagan at any given moment so as to protect small city access to Reagan
-Require the merged carrier to make up to 5 gates available on Chicago O’Hare Terminal 3, Concourse K available for use by competing airlines under a common-use scheme. The merged carrier would be allowed to continue using these gates when not requested by other airlines. The merged carrier would also be required to withdraw any objection to expansion and/or construction of a new terminal at Chicago O’Hare.
-Violating any of these conditions would require the merged carrier to pay a pre-negotiated fine to the US DOJ.

With these conditions, Aspire Aviation believes that the anti-trust problems with the American/US Airways merger will have been addressed to a sufficient degree that the merger should be allowed to proceed given the merits of the merger, such as an expanded network that has the scale to compete with United Continental and Delta Air Lines.