American Airline Mergers

As I was thinking about the two companies that I wanted to do for my course project on, I began to research companies on the internet and I ran across the merger between United and Continental airlines. The reason that I choose to do the merger is because I knew that they were going to go through many changes within this merger. Both airline companies have a lot to offer to each other with this merger that they can compete with Delta airlines one of the largest airline in the world. This merger will bring about several changes within both companies. In this paper I will be providing the different changes between both companies with the merger including the culture, systems and unions. Since they were two different companies

1. There are a few trends in the US airline industry. One is consolidation, wherein existing players merge in an attempt to lower their costs and generate operating synergies. The most recent major merger was the United Continental merger, which is still an ongoing affair, but has created the largest airline in the United States by market share (Martin, 2012). Another trend is towards low-cost carriers. In the US, Southwest has been a long-running success and JetBlue a strong new competitor, but in other countries this business model has proven exceptionally successful. The third major trend is the upward trend in jet fuel prices, and the increasing importance that this puts on hedging fuel prices and capacity management (Hinton, 2011).

The merger between American Airlines and U.S. Airways is one that can be explained using static game theory models. The two players in the game would be American Airlines and U.S. Airways. Each one of the players would have something to gain from the merger, but they would also have something to lose. In this game American Airlines is our first player. American Airlines’ potential payoff is merging with a company that is maximizing profits, but is also lacking in the customer service department. U.S. Airways is player two, and in this game they are merging with a business that is suffering from chapter 11 bankruptcy, but is excelling in customer service.

American airline industry is steadily growing at an extremely strong rate. This growth comes with a number economic and social advantage. This contributes a great deal to the international inventory. The US airline industry is a major economic aspect in both the outcome on other related industries like tourism and manufacturing of aircraft and its own terms of operation. The airline industry is receiving massive media attention unlike other industries through participating and making of government policies. As Hoffman and Bateson (2011) show the major competitors include Southwest Airlines, Delta Airline, and United Airline.

The domestic US airline industry has been intensely competitive since it was deregulated in 1978. In a regulated environment, most of the cost increases were passed along to consumers under a fixed rate-of-return based pricing scheme. This allowed labor unions to acquire a lot of power and workers at the major incumbent carriers were overpaid. After deregulation, the incumbent carriers felt the most pain, and the floodgates had opened for newer more nimble carriers with lower cost structures to compete head-on with the established airlines. There were several bankruptcies followed by a wave of consolidation with the fittest carriers surviving and the rest being

6.2.2 Increase competition. The complexity of the US airline industry and loss of market share to low cost carriers and other competitors. The airline industry is becoming highly competitive with new and emerging airlines penetrating the market as low cost carriers. The low-cost carrier competitors are steadily increasing in the airline industry and are probing the market with low fares to capture valued customers from major airlines like American, Delta and Southwest Airlines, reducing their overall market share and planned revenue in the industry. According to American Airlines President Robert Isom "American Airlines now has something to offer every customer, from those who want simple, low-price travel to those who want an ultra-premium experience via First Class"; to alleviate such issues the airlines can implement new measures and prices to equalize or eliminate the competition, thereby reducing financial risks.

At the onset of the airline industry in the United States, major network airlines were the sole providers of air travel. This multifaceted industry was a difficult industry to break into as a consequence of “sophisticated customer segmentation, hub-and spoke models and costly information systems for reservations, fare wars and intense competition” (Thompson 2008). Shrinkage in airline ticket prices augmented the demand for airline travel. Many markets were simply deserted or over-looked by major network airlines; this is a region a fresh “second tier of service providers” could enter into. This endeavor proved to provide a consumer savings of billions per year. Thus in June of 1971, after a tumultuous battle with other Texas-based

Two of the largest competing airlines in America may seem to have a lot in common to a consumer’s eye: big commercial planes, friendly staff, one free carry-on bag, complimentary snacks. Maybe the biggest comparison of them all is how much of the airline market these two companies take up. But for every similarity, there must be a difference. Beyond contrasting ticket prices, there are many fronts on which to compare Southwest Airlines and American Airlines. To begin when the companies began, American Airlines was established approximately 40 years sooner than Southwest Airlines as a result of a merger. In terms of people, Southwest Airlines currently has just about half the number of employees that American does. However, to truly compare the two companies, the organization itself must be researched and analyzed. Southwest Airlines and American Airlines appear to be very different to this day in terms of organizational culture, team dynamics, and conflict and negotiation.

Being the largest airline in the world comes with some significant advantages, one of the most important is a physical presence in the locations that passengers want to travel. As part of the anti-trust settlement, American Airlines agreed to sell approximately 15% of their takeoff and landing slots in Washington D.C. and New York . Even with this sale of slots, American Airlines is still able to offer flights to over 250 destinations daily. Just by their sheer size, American Airlines should be capturing a significant share of the market.

On April 4th, 2016, Alaska Air Group, Inc. announced that it had agreed to a merger agreement with Virgin America Inc. Alaska Air agreed to pay $57 per share in cash, for a total of around $2.6 billion. After taking into account Virgin’s operating leases, Alaska Air will pay $4 billion dollars to acquire Virgin. Upon completion of the acquisition, Alaska Air became the 5th largest U.S. airline, surpassing JetBlue in terms of ASM (available seat miles). Given that both airlines focus on the West Coast, this deal strengthens Alaska Air’s West Coast presence, positioning the company well to dominate this geography. However, while there are certainly strategic benefits of the transaction, an analysis from both buyer and seller perspectives reveals significant downsides as well.

In the past three years the airline industry has faced an unparalleled list of challenges and American Airlines has certainly had more than the others. Year by year AA has tried to recover with a great deal of effort to turn the company around. The strategies they are applying to counteract the status are : Lower costs to compete, give to the customers the service they are expecting

Americans next largest competitor soon followed with their own merger a year after the Delta airline merger. In 2010 United Airways merged with Continental Airways. With this merger, United now owned and controlled an estimated 21 percent of the seats within the US market according to the Wall Street Journal. Also in the article, the author estimates that because of the merger, the combined carriers would generate around $1 to $1.2 billion in net annual synergies. This number would include around $800 to $900 million in revenue gains and $200 to $300 million in cost savings by the year 2013. Besides government regulation, the two firms had issues before the merger was even announced to the public. Two years prior to the 2010 merger, United

The years since regulation have been rocky for the airline industry. Airline after airline has declared bankruptcy and either ceased existence or emerged as a weaker airline. The surviving airlines have done so by merging and protecting their territory with tactics not even dreamed of in most industries. Robert Crandall said it best when he noted, "This is a nasty, rotten business (Petzinger,1995)." You would think that with the competition allowed by deregulation that a large number of new names would exist, but that does not seem to be the case. Most Americans still travel on American, Delta, United, US Airways, or Continental (Kane, 2003). The only true champion of deregulation is Southwest Airlines, whose success is paving the way for others such as JetBlue, but the obstacles are enormous. Initially, the airlines went after each other by slashing fares and driving competitors out of business. The industry quickly learned that although this tactic was effective, it was not profitable, and it was more economical to focus on controlling the air out of a few cities (hubs) than to attempt to directly compete in every single market. Since most of the major airlines already had key cities in which they controlled most of the takeoff and landing slots, airlines could charge higher fares and take in greater profits without any real head to head

When the merger was officially made, passengers including those who travel extensively for business, have been troubled with taking longer to get to their destination due to connecting flights and using different airlines such as Frontier, Spirit or Southwest. United slashed two-thirds of its flights and drop 39 nonstops and cut approximately 18% passenger totals at the airport, leaving much room for rising competition between the other airlines.

The Risk of Entry by Potential Competitors – Since the deregulation of the airline industry in 1978 over 1,300 new airlines have opened for business. However, most now are bankrupt or merged with the other carriers to stay workable. The established giants were Delta (merged with Northwest), American Airlines (merged with U.S. Airways), United Airlines (merged with Continental), and now Alaska Airlines (merged with Virgin America). Now the Low-Cost Carriers (LCCs) are posing a massive threat which includes Southwest Airlines (merged with Air Tran), and JetBlue.