What mergers do you think should have been blocked and why?

All good points; good post. I really think VX is a good airline with a good
product, but it is growing too fast---and too large. The other Virgin companies---VirginAtlantic, VirginAustrailia (prior to Blue merger), VirginExpress---all have between 40-50 aircraft. VX is going to have 75-100 aircraft in the coming years, and will continue to bleed cash, due to the enormous cost of that growth. If they stopped at 45-50 jets, I truly believe it will be successful and make a profit. They can't overtake UNICAL.

Yes, I hope you don't work for Spirit either! It really sucks at Spirit..16-18 days off and 80-100 hours of credit sucks!

I have never seen the 4 days go away unless a pilot chose to build his line that way based on dropped trips.

Xtra operates under Spirit right now because Spirit is/was having issues with their seat replacement program. A product of growing to fast and not having a plan to maintain or replace a/c seats.

Get your facts straight before you bash another airline... Especially one where guys walked the line and did not cross!

Now let's get back on with the thread topic about Virgin!

United just launched SFO-RDU. I guess it is true. Even if a new market is thought of, United will launch a route there...

All of them. Let poorly managed airlines die. The way things stand now we are left with five very large airlines. American, United, Delta, Southwest, USair. It will be only a matter of time, one of these airlines will run into financial problems due to incompetent management/leadership. What then?

If any of these five mega airlines (soon to be four after the AA/USair merge) fail, the smaller JetBlue, Alaska, Allegant, and who ever else is out there, wouldn't be able to fill the void left behind. The government will be forced to bail them out. The old to big to fail concept.

So again, if you want to put away the rubber stamp, put them all away.

I see the present state of merger mania as a large correction from the previously bailed out airlines and their insane RJ real estate bubble buying binge. Pre merger there were way too many massive network carriers with tons of capacity (especially in the way over hyped
businessman wants frequency" RJ feeders) who'se only purpose in existing was to raid the hubs of competitors and cherry pick revenue of key point to point routes. It worked great when one airline had high cost RJ's and few if any other did. But when they all ended up with a massive RJ infestation all they did was bleed one another dry with high CASM insanity.

Had USAir been allowed to liquidate when they should have been, and the precident set that any other would be allowed to follow suit, the industry would have corrected itself without nearly as big a hit to labor and the surviving airlines would have been in a far superior position to fend off the cancerous supernova growth of JetBlue and AirTran. Now here we are, all draged down to the lowest common denominator (I think it was an AA exec that said the industry is only as smart as it's dumbest competitor), the pensions are gone anyway, most Captains make previous FO pay adjusted for inflation and USAir Captains make current FO pay anyway.

But at least the industry is rationalizing its previous level of drasticly excessive competition (which we both agree, one way or another, HAD to be reduced) and the MBA idiocy of "moving the world 50 seats at a time" has been tossed onto the large trash heap of failed airline manager history.

Mergers aren't the problem, but they are (one of many) answers to fixing the broken US airline model. They have to happen to get to where we need to be, yet of course that's not all that needs to happen. I agree that failing carriers need to go away, be they legacy airlines or beloved start ups and so called LCC's crushed by healthy legacys. Either way, we are well beyond a zero sum game with the fantasy order books of the ponzi scheme LCC's and start ups as well as the fairy tale fantasy Howard Hughes wanna be foreigh EGO airlines rushing in head first to out do eachother to be the hero of Farnborough to see who can order a million more A380's and 787's than the other one. Something has to give, and it will.

Airlines that think they will grow and conquer the world will stop growing and be a shall of their former selves. Some will go away entirely. As it should be. I hope you are right though, and as long as the playing field is level on the policy front, let there be no quarter for airlines that can't make it, and let there be no more bailouts. Not for entitled legacy airlines and not for populist so called "low cost" carriers either.

And either way, there needs to be, and there will be, more mergers.

You have some good points Gloopy. I don't know what the answer or fix is but I know this is NOT the industry or career it was when I started.

Why do people always say "lowest common denominator" on these threads? In my experience it's a phrase rednecks use to look smarter. I make grammar/spelling mistakes all the time, but things like this just make me cringe.

The lowest common denominator when you're adding 1/4 and 1/3 is 12. What the hell does that have to do with our industry?

Maybe people use it just because it has the word "lowest" in it and it sounds fancy.

It's a figure of speech that says, "the smallest, most basic thing in common between these two (or multiple) things is...."

And that is like the smallest, most basic fractional unit between two fractions -- the LCD.

How is that so difficult to grasp?

Apparently, very difficult.