Reason will return to this whole process – and DL’s plan will prevail because it provides benefits to all involved – just not to DL’s creditors at the expense of all others as US proposes.
In that one "rosy scenario" sentence, you've shown all of us the stunning flaw in your reasoning. Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings indeed
ARE for the benefit of the creditors --
not management,
not shareholders,
not employees,
not communities and especially
not Congress! And absolutely certainly
NOT at the expense of the creditors. If agreements can be reached with the creditors (and approved by the judge), there might be some (potentially significant) benefits for these other stakeholders, but it is not a requirement in bankruptcy law. And if management gets too confrontational with the creditors, the debtor could find itself being run by a court-appointed trustee. Don't think it can happen to Delta? Ask Eastern.
And all of your claims that Congress will prohibit US Airways from doing this and the DOJ will prohibit US Airways from doing that, are pretty vague. Exactly what would Congress or the DOJ do to stop a US/DL merger? Would Congress pass a law to that effect, only to almost certainly have Bush veto it? Would the DOJ send a junior lawyer (or even the Attorney General himself) to the bankruptcy court to tell a judge what he "must" do without any discretion on his part simply because the government says so? I would love to see
that encounter! Be sure to remember the "Separation of Powers" doctrine in situations like this.
Look, I agree with you that a DL/NW merger would almost certainly be better operationally than the proposed US acquisition of DL. And it would also likely be better for all of the stakeholders I mentioned above, other than the creditors. And the creditors may eventually decide that the DL plan (whatever it ultimately turns out to be in final form) is better than the US proposal. But they may not, and that's the issue -- the creditors have all (or, at the very least, most) of the leverage with the bankruptcy judge, and they will most likely get their way. And IMHO there's virtually nothing that you or I or any of the other stakeholders can do about it. For you to think otherwise is being naive in the extreme.