I don't see US making any announcements. But it is possible that the UCC could do so. That door was opened up by Judge Lane. If the UCC can bring an amiable (to them) bid forward, they could effectively lock DL out from making a competing bid.
There are a lot of us that are curious what would be the basis for this type of merger proposal? AMR just gained 6 more months of exclusivity to file a Plan of Reorg and there is no evidence that any groups on the UCC other than labor are interested in a merger or are even interested in terminating the company's right to maintain exclusivity.
There's no evidence?... It might take campaign promises and horse trading on a level that even Obama would blush, but there's definitely evidence that there are constituencies in the UCC who would be in favor of a merger.
For starters, how can you not see where HP would back a merger? They have the PSS business under contract at both carriers, and won't want to put it into play anymore than it already might be with AA allegedly backing away from the yet-to-be-developed Jetstream platform. A deal with HP would probably keep that alive in the short term. Whether or not they'd move towards Shares in the interim is another discussion.
PBGC? So far, the indications are that they'll back anyone who agrees to keep the pensions frozen as opposed to distress terminated. They don't care who writes the checks into the pension funds -- as long as it isn't their money.
That could very well leave Boeing and the banks in the minority.
The pm-US and pm-HP fleets will need renewal at some point (Airbii wear out faster than Boeings), so all Parker has to do is promise Boeing an opportunity to edge out Airbus for that order.
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Here's my concern with that type of a scenario is this --- I'm still having flashbacks of the "Lorenzo is better than Icahn" decision that Eastern's unions made, and the "Burr is better than Lorenzo" decision made by Frontier 1's unions...
I see it as a bit shortsided to simply bet on "anyone but the incumbent" when your career is concerned.
That said, Scott Kirby has proven it's possible to make money off the sh*t sandwich US has for a network. There are some who feel that giving him the ability to tinker with a real network and real hubs, he'd get similar results. That's certainly plausible.
Apparently, there's also growing consensus in the banking community that US's management team is a better bet.
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If (and this is a pretty big if) the UCC decides that it's worth considering, AA will not have a lot of choices in the matter but to let the due dilligence go forward.
