Biggest failure I see is the failure to grow. In the almost eight years since the merger, US hasn't grown. Dollar revenues are up, to be sure, but since 2005, everyone's revenues are higher, including AA's revenues.
And to be clear, AA hasn't grown since 2005 either. But AA didn't have the lowest paid workforce, like US did. Low cost airlines should grow, not stagnate or shrink. But what has Parker done with his very low cost airline? Contracted. Continued to shrink. Instead of building up LGA, where US had more slots than anyone else, Parker retreated. Many of the LGA flights were flown with Dash8s at the time of the slot swap with DL.
I can't criticise the US contraction at LAS, as that was a peculiar situation and US didn't walk away from high-yielding traffic there. But NYC? Waving the white flag and trading away most all of the non-hub/non-shuttle slots to DL in exchange for one-third as many slots at DCA (plus a measly $65 million) was poor management.
Had Parker leveraged his very low costs at US and expanded into key business markets (like DL has done), then it's possible that Parker could have raised the pay of the pilots and FAs and maybe continued to show some profits. But instead, he sat on his thumbs for those almost-eight years hoping that he could take over UA or DL or, now, AA and use the bigger bank accounts (and revenues) to finally increase his employees' pay. IMO, he should have spent the past eight years turning US into a power-house and paying his pilots and FAs industry-average (or better) pay. Now that's on the brink of taking over AA, he has finally told his employees that they'll get their huge raises once he has control of AA's checkbook. That doesn't sound like a recipe for success.
Once the merger with AA is official, the combined airline will still lack power in NYC, won't be any bigger at DCA than US currrently, and will have the same PHL and CLT that the current US holds. The combined airline will be bigger at BOS but not larger than jetBlue.
