This is the third airline name to appear with this livery. It started life as American West, which then became US Airways. Now it flies with the new American name and logo. The US Airways name and Cactus callsign will cease operation next week when they officially become one with American.
If I understand correctly, after all those mergers, only three giant carriers remain: American, United, and Delta. Plus Southwest, which is a very large airline, but does not operate a conventional hub-and-spoke operation, and only a couple of weeks ago started to fly internationally.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure how the interests of the traveling consumer have been helped in this way.
Not that here in Europe the situation is all that much better.
--Filip
How's this: The interests of the traveling consumer have been served by simplifying the marketplace: You can choose the red plane, the blue plane, or the red and blue plane. All those other confusing choices have been thoughtfully eliminated.
DeleteYeah, I don't really believe it either. :-)
Besides Southwest, we have Alaska, JetBlue, and Virgin America; each of these has a limited piece of the market. Then, at the "low price is everything" end of the market, we have Allegiant, Frontier, and Spirit. These have even more limited offerings, but if they happen to offer service to someplace that you want to go, you have a few more options. There will probably always be room in the market for a few niche players who are willing to go places that the behemoths can't be bothered to serve.