World’s Largest Airline: Delta and Northwest meger approved

Today (Wednesday October 29th 2008), the Justice Department approved the merger between Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines. The merger will be the largest airline in world bringing down American Airlines to the second position.
The combined airline will be called Delta with headquarters at Atlanta and Chief Executive as Richard Anderson.
From CNN Money -
After a [...]

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Delta to start Electronic Boarding Passes at New York’s LaGuardia Airport

Earlier I had blogged about the use of PDAs/Cellphones as boarding passes. Delta Air Lines is starting to use this technology starting Tuesday June 17th 2008 at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Passengers can now pull up the boarding pass with the bar code image on their mobile phones (web-enabled) and scan it at the security [...]

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Delta and Northwest: Varied fleet advantageous or disadvantageous

Recently, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines said that “having different fleet allows them to run more efficiently”
There fleet differences (from my earlier post) -Delta – Boeing 737, Boeing 757, Boeing 767, Boeing 777, MD-88, MD-90 Northwest – Airbus A319, Airbus A320, Airbus A330, Boeing 747, Boeing 757, Boeing 787 (in 2009), MD DC-9
Earlier, during [...]

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Northwest and Delta: What about the pilots?

There are a lot of people who make an airline “fly”, but probably the most important ones are the Pilots. No matter how anyone would debate on the the current technology, we all trust our lives to the pilots when we are in an aircraft. There is no airline in the world that can [...]

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World’s Largest Airline: Delta to acquire Northwest Airlines

Delta Airlines has agreed to acquire Northwest Airlines for a $3.1 billion (stock deal). The merged airline would become the world’s largest airline.
Facts -

The new airline will be “Delta”
Headquartered in – Atlanta, Georgia
Chief Executive Officer – Richard Anderson (CEO of Delta)
No hubs are supposed to shut down (as expected)

Remaining Hurdles -

Shareholders of both Delta and [...]

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Delta + Northwest: What would the merger look like?

Since Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines are supposed to announce their merger next week, I thought I will do some research (all Delta numbers in blue and northwest in red) -

Name – Delta Air Lines + Northwest Airlines = ? (Delta?)

Hubs – Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, JFK New York, Detroit, Minneapolis, Memphis, Narita [...]

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Delta and Northwest Merger Update: Pilots reach tentative deal

Delta Air Lines Inc. has reached a tentative contract agreement with its pilots. The disagreement earlier was a big impediment in the its merger plans with Northwest Airlines, Inc.. The agreement would increase Delta pilots’ salaries and also give them a stake in the merged carrier.
Next step? Pilots at Northwest have to agree on [...]

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Northwest Airlines CEO’s unusual Exit Clause

Northwest Airlines Chief Executive Doug Steenlan’s employment contract has a special exit clause which gives him the option of  1 month notice to voluntarily leave from his position with a payout of 7.8 mil dollars. 
This makes me wonder, if companies care about these clauses or not. There seem to be a big discrepancy in negotiations [...]

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