Are you freaking kidding me? Continental and United are merging, but the new airline will be called UNITED and their headquarters will be Chicago, not Houston. I’m sure these details were bargaining chips used to seal the deal, but sometimes branding is important… and Continental has a far better reputation than United.
I hope they know what they’re doing…
United and Continental join forces in $3-billion merger
The deal creates a behemoth airline, to be called United. Executives do not expect large-scale cutbacks because the carriers have little overlap.
United Airlines and Continental Airlines announced early Monday morning they were combining operations in a $3-billion merger, forming the world’s largest airline.Its aircraft will bear Continental’s globe logo on the tail and be painted in the Houston-based carrier’s colors. And it will be unveiled to customers with a new campaign, “Let’s Fly Together.”
Headquarters for the new United operations will be in Chicago’s Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower. United will move forward with plans to place its nerve center and 2,800 staffers in the skyscraper starting in October, sources said.
Houston will become the largest hub for the new carrier, bypassing United’s longstanding fortress hub at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Smisek will have offices in both cities, the airlines said.
3. May 2010 at 12:44 pm
PERFECT! It will then undoubtedly be branded Too Big to Fail® by the OhBummer administration and become our first nationalized air carrier!
3. May 2010 at 12:48 pm
Oh, no… I hadn’t thought of the numerous political opportunities…
3. May 2010 at 12:53 pm
Actually United is better off financially then Continental, Continental has been shopping around for a buyer for years now and are really close to bankruptcy.
So we will only have 4 choices for airlines once the merger happens, Delta, SW, Spirit and United.
Hope the new United isn’t like the Delta merger, NW had a huge hub in Detroit but the new major hub is Atlanta and Delta doubled all prices coming out of Detroit. Don’t know why they wanted to screw Detroit so badly but they did.
3. May 2010 at 12:54 pm
Didn’t know that about Continental; thought they were doing okay.
From what I’ve read, prices are expected to go up across the board.
3. May 2010 at 3:38 pm
In my opinion, very little good comes out of these mega-airline mergers. The bloat factor is increased, and the competition is less, so they have more opportunities to stick it to the customers. Which is why I like the smaller, fewer-frills carriers like Southwest and AirTran. They keep the bloat factor down, translating into better cost controls that they pass on to the public.
3. May 2010 at 4:53 pm
Well, if one or more are doing bad financially, what sense does it make to unite unless they know that by doing so the competition would be less and thus they’ll be able to charge higher prices.
Higher prices -while the consumer hates them- might keep them out of obama’s waiting room. Cheaper for us now to pay higher ticket prices than to become unwitting victims of yet another ‘bailout’.
3. May 2010 at 5:21 pm
Great. Double the airline, double the crappy service.
3. May 2010 at 6:07 pm
I usually had really good service with Continental. Southwest is pretty good, too.
3. May 2010 at 9:02 pm
Delta sucks. Southwest is good but pricey.