"What Salt Lake City offers or doesn't offer (before a merger) isn't going to impact this deal one iota," said Zeidner, who has a legal background in mergers and acquisitions. "After (the merger) happens, during the transition, that's where we want to come in and offer to help the transition however we can."

Zeidner said the merged company likely will be seeking incentives from the city and state, such as tax breaks and capital infrastructure investments.

"We're going to need to assess fairly quickly (after a merger) what the needs of Delta are," Becker said.

During a meeting with the Deseret Morning News editorial board earlier this month, Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said GOP legislators are talking about giving Delta a multimillion-dollar income tax break in an effort to keep the airline's hub in Salt Lake City.

Other members of the Air Transportation Promotion Alliance at Monday's meeting were Rep. Jim Gowans, D-Tooele; Sen. Karen Mayne, D- West Valley City; Meg Holbrook, Utah Transportation commissioner; Salt Lake City Councilman Carlton Christensen and Jason Perry, director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development.

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E-mail: jpage@desnews.com