Delta-Northwest is a go: Justice Department

The Justice Department announced today that its Antitrust Division has found that “the proposed merger between Delta and Northwest is likely to produce substantial and credible efficiencies that will benefit U.S. consumers and is not likely to substantially lessen competition.” This clears the way for Delta and Northwest to merge officially. It was not an [...]

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“Wild times”: Southwest’s Gary Kelly announces service to MSP, discusses challenges in airline industry

DALLAS — Southwest is well-positioned in tricky times for the airline industry and will launch new service to Minneapolis-St. Paul in March 2009, Southwest Airlines chief Gary Kelly said today. The Twin Cities are the first new Southwest market since 2006, and the first planned service will be nonstop to Chicago’s Midway Airport.
The announcement of [...]

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Would a Northwest Chapter 11 filing help its merger case?

J. P. Morgan has updated a report assessing the liquidity and balance-sheet health of U.S. airlines, and it finds Northwest Airlines second most likely to file for reorganization under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. If you’ll recall my introduction to airline antitrust, the Justice Department looks more kindly on a merger if one of the parties is [...]

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Pension protection debate holds up FAA bill

The House’s version of the FAA reauthorization bill has been on the Senate floor for the past few weeks, but it’s currently stalled (although scheduled for a cloture vote today, May 6, which if passed would move it forward for consideration by the full Senate without more amendments or if lost would hold up the [...]

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“All things are lawful. . .”

“. . . wrote St. Paul, ‘but not all things are profitable.’ And so it is with the proposed merger of Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines.”
My new op-ed on the Delta-Northwest merger is up on American.com.

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The NWA legacy

Joke circulating among Northwest pilots: “They’re going to incorporate elements of both corporate identities in the merger. From Delta, we get ‘Delta.’ From Northwest, we get ‘Airlines.’”

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All politics is local: liveblogging the Delta-Northwest hearings

Notes: I am leaving out redundant passages, which often occur in congressional hearings. Unless something is in quotation marks, it is a paraphrase of what a speaker is saying. Editorial comments are so noted.
The antitrust task force of the House Judiciary Committee is having a hearing to assess airline competition and the proposed merger between [...]

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Anderson and Steenland to hit the Hill

Delta CEO Richard Anderson and Northwest CEO Doug Steenland will be on Capitol Hill Thursday to testify before the following congressional panels:

House Judiciary Committee, Antitrust Task Force, April 24, 10:30 a.m., Rayburn 2141.
Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, April 24, 2:00 p.m., Dirksen 226.

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Some random numbers on Delta-NWA

From Mike Boyd’s weekly update:
7,100+
Based on an independent Airports:USA analysis, the number of overlapping markets technically represented by the merger of Delta and Northwest, defined as city pairs where a consumer can possibly book either carrier.
14
Out of the top 100 overlapping markets, the number (other than routes connecting existing DL/NW hubs) where the combined market [...]

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Congress and the airline merger: the small-R republican remedy

Congress may usually cleave along party lines, but it often divides along local lines as well. We are seeing this bipartisan and narrow parochialism in congressmen’s response to the news of the Delta-Northwest merger. Congress is dividing along regional lines of business interest in support of or opposition to the tie-up. The dynamics of the [...]

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