I'm not so "skeptical" about your identity, as you're obviously an outsider fishing... but it's not a question of whether the UsAirways/United guys will pull it off. The USAPA guys are unable to go beyond their raw hatred of erveryone lese to even begin to do anything anything rational or constructive, but the fact is that the precedent has been set. They will "pull this off" with no effort because it is now the price of accomplishing a merger. More simply stated, they will get it because we got it, and they will want it.

If anything, they will get more, because the price to be paid for this will need to be high enough to buy peace for the future merger AND the preceding (unfinished) merger between UsAirways and America West. There will be such chaos trying to merge seniority lists with a third airline, and so little desire to throw in adequate wages, or to let wages snap-back, that a lot of funny money (in paper form) will need to be thrown at the front end of this thing to have any effect at all. It's going to take an unusual amount to buy any acceptable degree of "peace" in this case, so you should look at what was established in the DAL/NWA deal as a sort of low starting point, and compensate upwards, because the distance between status quo and the finish line is so much greater at LCC/UAL than it was for DAL/NWA.