I was waiting for someone to demonstrate my point. Congrats......you're it. The point was AA's pre-merger situation just as US Airways is speculative and subjective based on ones position and interests. Read the UAL-CAL SLI award and you'll see both those parties did the very same thing there too.

There is just as much documentation that AA flush with over 6 billion in cash at time of filing was simply exercising a strategic bankruptcy to absolve themselves of undesirable labor debt and obligations as opposed to a purely financial one. Both Boeing and Airbus had zero problem inking deals with AA for close to 1000 aircraft orders and options 6 months prior to filing. A better question regarding US Airways fragmentation, is what was the expected timeline to combine the two separate operations ?

After all, it is the only airline still not merged close to a decade after committing to do so with no end in sight. Call me crazy, but that seems pretty fragmented to me, but again, it matters little what we as individual pilots or even the Integration committees assert or claim. Just as in UAL-CAL, the panel will have little difficulty assessing those factors and discarding the subjective claims. Of all the complex issues involved in this SLI, pre-merger financial conditions present and future are among the easiest to quantify. It may be they place little emphasis on that aspect anyway, so try not to get too worked up over this issue.