Captain Lee Moak said in a letter to membership that combining unions and seniority lists tends to be "a protracted and very contentious process" that often ends up in arbitration. He cited the May 2005 merger between US Airways and America West as an example of what can go wrong, noting that "while US Airways now operates under a single operating certificate and many of the corporate synergies have been achieved, a joint pilot contract has not yet been reached, and as a result, the pilots have been unable to capture any meaningful value from the merger transaction."
Moak's letter follows reports from earlier this week that Delta and Northwest have agreed in principle to an at-market stock swap merger, and have taken the deal to their unions in hopes of winning labor support before announcing it publicly. Moak did not say whether the union was currently engaged in negotiations.
The letter also came amid a flurry of rumors that the deal was set to be announced as soon as Friday, including a story on the Web site of Atlanta television station WSB saying that the deal was done, citing a separate story on the Web site aero-news.net that seemed only to rehash some of the information surrounding the potential transaction that has been floating around for the better part of a week. But the WSB story was taken down soon after, and airline officials offered no comment on the status of negotiations.
Conflicting reports are nothing new in this now month-old merger saga. Moak himself noted the amount of attention and rumors surrounding the process, saying that in recent months "media speculation has run rampant" with stories of deals, only to see "many 'event days' come and go without any 'event' ever taking place." And while a deal still seems likely in the near future, whether it comes Friday morning or next week remains the subject of much speculation and little evidence.
- Lou Whiteman
See Moak's letter
See Dealscape post on pilot talks delaying a deal announcement
See aero-news.net story
