American, US Airways seal $11bn merger

WASHINGTON: American Airlines and US Airways announced an $11-billion merger on Thursday to create the world's largest airline whose fleet will be close to 1,000 planes and carry some 166 million passengers annually. The new combine will fly to 336 destinations in 56 countries . Although American dropped its Chicago-New Delhi direct flight last year due to losses, and typically such mergers often cut capacity and eliminate routes, the union could result in revisiting the flight given the constant uptick in US-India traffic. The new entity will retain the name of American Airlines, which is the bigger of the merging partners, and it will be helmed by Douglas Parker, CEO of US Airways. Once the world's largest airline company before it was hurt by 9/11, the new American Airlines will again trump in size Delta Airlines which muscled up after a merger with Northwest, and United Airlines which also acquired heft after merging with Continental. Each claimed to be the world's biggest by some metric or the other at some point. Airline executives offered plenty of explanations about the rationale for the merger, but there were fears from other quarters about what such continuing consolidation and monopoly would do to the market. With the latest merger, the top four American fleets — American, United, Delta and Southwest — will control about 75% of the domestic market.
 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/American-US-Airways-seal-11bn-merger/articleshow/18509228.cms