Interesting point. The ticket says "United" but it's odd for the CEO to essentially say that, assuming responsibility for contracted flying. Smisek testified to Congress that not now not ever no how no way the Colgan crash was Continental's fault, even though the victim's families tried to tie it to Continental for years, and were making progress. But each settled until the last holdout was a relative (father?) of someone killed in the house the plane crashed into whose case was I think fell under a legal maneuver in the merger and had an ordered or forced settlement. He hadn't settled because all he wanted was for Continental to be held legally responsible for the accident because they sold the ticket.

So, God forbid another Colgan occurs, it will be hard to take the position Smisek did that litigation stops at our door. And painful as it is, I think that would be a good thing because if the legacy is legally responsible for the contracted carrier then it makes less sense to even have a contracted carrier since you have to control the quality of product yourself from maintenance to customer service to pilot qualifications and safety. I suspect, but don't know, that it's likely tied to the cost of accident insurance. If a court declares at any point that the legacy is legally responsible for punitive damages of a contracted carrier then the cost of that insurance may be so great that it would make more sense to just own the contracted carrier to control the product.