airline merger plus or minus

http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/14/news/companies/delta_northwest/index.htm?cnn=yes

Two things. One the most profitable and respected company is still Southwest (they did slip some this year because of the inspector flap and delays from that). Not Northwest-Delta. Both of these two are close to the bottom on the all important 'customer satisfaction' lines. A merger of crappy companies is just more crap. The top companies of airlines are all discount travelers, Southwest, Jet Blue, etc. The most profitable carrier in Europe operates on a similar method. Many of the profits are recouped in fees or expenses for items that people seem to assume they should get (food/drinks/etc-- water should probably still be free whenever they take it away from us at the security line).

The biggest problem for airlines is the hostage holdings whenever there's a delay of people stuck on an airplane that isn't going anywhere. People can get used to delays from weather and even mechanical problems (though that's the more unnerving of the two). It's the way these delays are handled that poses problems.

Second, airline fares are undoubtedly going to have to go up some because of rising jet fuel costs which have done in several smaller carriers. They cannot however go up much because people have already basically stopped flying owing to the frustrations with rising secondary fees, delays, and mechanical issues. So the reality is for the bigger full fare companies to survive they're going to have to either merge or change their operations, ie stop acting like monopolies in a competitive environment. In other words, I don't care if 80% of the flights are done by 3 companies. Many of those flights are either A) business travelers who don't care what the cost is or B) international flights, where again, the cost isn't a big deal. So long as the domestic flights' costs can be battered down by a few efficient and effective smaller carriers, we're not in any danger. Shut the hell up and quit worrying us over the freakin' airplanes.