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Airline merger causes concerns

Enter commentThat DOES NOT sound good!

The fact of the matter is, these are very serious and dangerous times for the airline industry. All of the fained posturing in the world by politicians, does not hide the fact that this merger will definately happen. It's either merge or risk a complete breakdown catastrophe of the airline industries solvency. Who is going to suddenly wave a magic wand and make the ludicrous energy prices go away? It's either merge or die. There is no in between. Delta/Northwest is a good merriage, as mergers go. Salt Lake City has many unique positives in it's corner, which should prove to weigh on it's side in the final shakeout. It isn't by shear luck in previous shakedowns, that Salt Lake has continually emerged as bigger and stronger. Also, as the larger carriers trim their domestic footprint and expand their international presence, look to Skywest as an integral linchpin in the future of Salt Lake's domestic air travel health.

Mergers eliminate competition, which eliminates consumer choice, which results in one supplier for high demand, which results in higher fares. Free markets thrive when many offer competing services. When only one service is offered, quality suffers because the one service knows consumers have nowhere else to turn.

Well, the state of the airline industry as it currently is causes concerns as well, so...

The airlines are consolidating and shrinking in what will prove to be an ultimately futile attempt to continue to exist in anything like their present form.
The end of the cheap oil era makes mass market air travel an unworkable business model. The airlines will shrink to accomodate the much smaller fraction of the population who will still be able to afford their much higher costs. For the rest of us, we will get used to riding on busses and trains again.
Your tremendous sense of entitlement is probably telling you this can't be true. But the coming years will change your mind

Your comments are true in a market where there is a low barrier to entry, inputs are cheap, and overhead is low, but the airline industry is not that market. With rising input costs (fuel, insurance, equipment), high salaries due to union influence, a merger is the only way to stay in business in this case. I love competition as much as the next guy, but a company has to be able to stay in business, neither Delta or NWA were in that position going it alone in the long-term.

So, Sarah, what would you propose as a solution to the perceived threat of reduced competition in the airline industry?

Oberstar thinks deregulation of airlines was bad? Typical democrat. Deregulation of airlines was the best thing that ever happened for airline passengers. FACT ALERT: The FAA's safety function was originally and explicitly created to compensate for the effects of economic regulation, which protected carriers from the competitive consequences of accidents. Then came deregulation. There have been 15 years since the late 1920s in which passenger deaths fell to single digits or zero, 14 of them since deregulation in 1978. (Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2008)

With todays communication technology it's high time to eliminate all of the travel anyway, as far as business travel is concerned. I'm retired now but when I was still employed I could not believe the travel budgets for a lot of corporations--ala airline tickets, hotel rooms,per diem for meals, plus catered seminars and meetings and after hours entertainment, plus rental car, limosine, shuttle costs. Give me a break, do we really need to be there in person when multiple communication options are so readily available? I think NOT.