35 years ago began merger mania in the U.S.. Previously, other mergers had occurred roughly in groups around the same time, but nothing like 1986. Starting in January, 1986 - January 1987 the following mergers would occur:

1/23/86: Northwest and Republic
3/01/86: TWA and Ozark
9/09/86: Delta and Western
11/18/86: American and AirCal*
11/18/86: USAir and PSA*
11/19/86: Alaska and Horizon**
1/12/87: Continental,PeoplExpress,Frontier, and New York Air

* Double dip - two mergers announced same day
** Alaska also began purchasing JetAmerica after a bidding war with Delta. Would operate separately until merged in 1987.

Great memories and great liveries as the airlines merged. Just reflecting back, that was a big year in consolidation for the airlines.

Any thoughts/memories from that time?

03/03/1986: Business Express buys Pilgrim

Piedmont bought Empire in 85 and merged it into Piedmont in 1986

A lot of hypocrisy of airline management during that time. The same capacity discipline practiced today was known back then too. Funny when one wipes out the competition that management gets capacity discipline instead chasing market share. I am glad I grew up in that time of variety.

I went through the AA/OC merger, coming in from Air California/AirCal. That was a shock. We didn't know for several months if we'd have jobs at AA. You can tell which ones we were/are, as AA just put a "10" in front of our 4-digit OC employee number, hence we call ourselves "The Perfect 10s". And AA only enrolled us with our first and middle initials, which has always been a problem with log-ins, paychecks, income tax insurance, Social Security, correspondence and now, in my case, Medicare enrollment. Nothing like receiving a warm personal mailing from AA: "Dear S."

Since then, a lot more consolidation.
Today, if any of the employees are still working, TWA, Ozark, AirCal and arch rival PSA, Allegheny/USAir/US Airways (plus Piedmont/Empire) all work together at American. To that, add in later joiners from South American Eastern/Braniff/Panagra divisions and RenoAir.
Likewise, Northwest, Republic (plus North Central/Hughes Airwest {Airwest= Bonanza, Pacific, West Coast} and Southern) and Western plus some PanAm divisions all work together at Delta.
CO, PE, FL (the original), NY, other PanAm divisions all work together at United.
Eastern and what was left of PanAm just hit the unemployment lines.
I won't get into the commuter/regional mergers and failures, plus the failed upstarts....too many to sort through.

I worked for RC in MSP, That was a nightmare merger. NWA thought we should have a Zero or One added to our employee numbers. We became know has red tail/green tails..I'm proud to say I'm a duck, and will always be a duck.Our logo was a duck/goose, named Herman. The biggest screw up was putting NWA ground crews working RC flights. RC ground crews had never touch jets bigger then the 757, ever. RC had CV 580, DC-9-10-30-50, MD 80 727, and just received 3 757. NWA had 727, 757, DC-10, and 747. NWA sent DC-9's to their gates and the other way around. I was put on another crew (NWA) we had planes coming into gates no idea from where or going outbound to ??? Bags mail, cargo was piled up at every gate. It took weeks to clear that mess up. I won't even get started on the union mess that alone took several years to get everyone into one union.

I remember these mergers.

Northwest gained better access to the southeast by buying Republic, although after the merger, NW greatly reduced RC's old Hughes AirWest routes out west.

Delta's acquisition of Western gave Delta a much larger presence in the west. They gained a hub at SLC and a precious market share increase at LAX.

Ozark was about to go under when TWA bought them. However, adding Ozark gave TWA a fortress hub at STL. Unfortunately, TWA ended up with a pile of debt as a result of the merger.

I was surprised when American bought AirCal in 1986. While they did gain better market share at popular airports like SNA, they also ended up disposing of all of the AirCal fleet a few years later. Ironically, they did not even get the 8 MD-80's that AirCal had ordered earlier in the 1980's. All of those MD-80's were sold prior to the merger in 1985 and early 1986.

USAir bought PSA with the full intention of maintaining the legacy PSA network along the west coast. However, they struggled to tie their west coast network to USAir's core, east coast operations. For this reason, the PSA network was pulled down by USAir in the early-1990's and the MD-80's were moved east to service the CLT and PIT hubs.

Alaska picked up a good feeder airline in Horizon, which allowed them to extend services down the Pacific Coast and into the Mountain West.

The marriages of Continental, PeopleExpress, Frontier and New York Air was a bizarre mess orchestrated by the notorious, Frank Lorenzo. Although realistically, I doubt PeopleExpress, Frontier and New York Air would have survived the 1980's had they tried to go it alone. All three were in financial trouble. As for the post-merger Continental, they were headed for some turbulent times, which included two trips to the bankruptcy court.

AirCal had a fairly well established frequent flyer base (the AirFair program), which AA wanted, along with the Happy Hop tour program, which some say was selling better in the region than AA Tours. They became hAApy Hop for a brief while before being assimilated into AA Tours.

We at AirCal did fare better than the later mergers, as we kept our seniority and meshed in. TWA and QQ folks went to the back of the line, with their hiring dates being the date AA closed escrow. They only have consideration for their TWA or QQ seniority for bidding within that shared single AA hire date. Although, other than the pilots, the rest of us from AirCal didn't get pay raises to match our original AA-hires for almost 4 years, when a company-wide revamp of pay scales finally brought us up even. At the time, AA had the A-scale, the hated B-scale and then the lower AirCal-scale.

How did you other merger victims fare?

And yes, the OC DC-9-80 fleet was gone well before AA the merger. The new 737-300s and dreadful BAe-146s were quieter, satisfying SNA. The DC-9-80s showed up at FL and their Frontier Horizon branch and others showed up at CO. Eventually they all ended up back together at CO, to my knowledge.

Was the Alaska-Jet America merger in the 1980's, too? What was the goal there, access to SoCal airports of LGB, BUR, and SNA? I do remember AS flying LAX-YYZ with an MD-80 after that.

As an MSP resident, the NW/RC merger has alway been an interesting one for me. From a network standpoint, it made perfect sense. So it always baffled me how they managed to screw up that merger so badly. The respective crews seemed to hate each other immediately, there was seemingly no attempt to get the two teams to like each other, no "Minnesota Nice" or "Midwestern hospitality" to be found. It could have been such an exciting opportunity for everyone (at least those based at MSP/DTW/MEM) who could have had new opportunities to fly much more exotic flights, or to stay closer to home, etc. But instead everyone just hated each other and NW had a reputation for surly crews all the way up until the DL merger. I'd like to learn more about what made this merger such a mess. Was it just a clash of corporate cultures, or a mess with seniority integration, all of the above? I know NW always had a reputation of not really being a "nice" employer. Were NC/RC much better on that front?

FLALEFTY wrote:

although after the merger, NW greatly reduced RC's old Hughes AirWest routes out west.

Most of the old RW routes were already gone before NW announced the merger. RC kept them for a few years but by the mid-80s they'd gone full hub & spoke using just MSP, DTW, and MEM without any hubs in the old RW territory. By Spring of 1985, you could count the exceptions on one hand, with just PHX-TUS, PHX-SNA, LAS-SEA, SLC-RNO, and SFO-SMF remaining, and almost all of them were essentially just tag-ons from further east. (February 1985 still had some remaining PHX tags like PHX-SEA-PDX and PHX-LAS-SEA, but these were gone by April except for LAS-SEA as a standalone.)

So Hughes being dismantled wasn't NW's doing. The rise of HP and WN and AS in former RW markets was the undoing for Republic's western division.

FLALEFTY wrote:

USAir bought PSA with the full intention of maintaining the legacy PSA network along the west coast. However, they struggled to tie their west coast network to USAir's core, east coast operations. For this reason, the PSA network was pulled down by USAir in the early-1990's and the MD-80's were moved east to service the CLT and PIT hubs.

Southwest's rapid growth on the west coast played a large role in this as well. The USAir cost structure simply could not compete at the time.

So Hughes being dismantled wasn't NW's doing. The rise of HP and WN and AS in former RW markets was the undoing for Republic's western division.[/quote]


The old RW system and PHX "hub" were taken down once Steve Wolf came on-board at RC in conjunction with the recession of '82 - PHX and LAS were not much of Metro areas back then compared to nowadays, sky-high interest rates curbed real estate development which was and still is a major industry in the Southwest.

HP began operations as a result of RC's pull-out in PHX and later HP expanded to LAS.

WN grew into the intra-CA market with the demise of the AC and PSA route systems by AA and US in conjunction with the '90-91 recession which began with a spike in fuel due to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The '90-91 recession took quite the toll on air traffic and led to losses at the Majors into the mid-90's and shutdowns at the carriers already close to the brink such as EA, ML, PA.

Most of the major/local carrier mergers of the 80's did not work out well as the local systems were drawn down in short time such as RW/RC, AC/AA, PS/US. None of the former systems survived.

Not much different with QQ/AA in the late '90's, QQ routes did not last long and AA kept the MD-80s with a white paint instead of polished aluminum like the legacy AA fleet at the time.

FLALEFTY wrote:

Ozark was about to go under when TWA bought them. However, adding Ozark gave TWA a fortress hub at STL. Unfortunately, TWA ended up with a pile of debt as a result of the merger.

Ozark made a small profit the last year of it's independence. TWA lost money that same year. Not setting any profit records, but OZ was not "about to go under".

I think United buying Pan Am's Pacific routes, really kicked off al this merger activity which happened in 85. NW needed domestic feed to compete and from there it was one after another...

Financially, the mid-to-late 1980s were “crazy years” on Wall Street, with the large investment banks and PE firms looking for deals all over the place. Mergers and acquisitions were the thing to do.

caflyboy wrote:

35 years ago began merger mania in the U.S.. Previously, other mergers had occurred roughly in groups around the same time, but nothing like 1986. Starting in January, 1986 - January 1987 the following mergers would occur:

1/23/86: Northwest and Republic
3/01/86: TWA and Ozark
9/09/86: Delta and Western
11/18/86: American and AirCal*
11/18/86: USAir and PSA*
11/19/86: Alaska and Horizon**
1/12/87: Continental,PeoplExpress,Frontier, and New York Air

* Double dip - two mergers announced same day
** Alaska also began purchasing JetAmerica after a bidding war with Delta. Would operate separately until merged in 1987.

Great memories and great liveries as the airlines merged. Just reflecting back, that was a big year in consolidation for the airlines.

Any thoughts/memories from that time?

For those who get confused on merger dates like me, I find it easier to think of a merger as the date the airlines actually combine operations and one of the codes goes away which I listed below:

10/1/86: NW/RC
10/26/86: TW/OZ
4/1/87: DL/WA
7/1/87: AA/OC
4/9/88: AL/PS (AL changed to the US code on or about Oct 1 1988)
8/5/89: US/PI (yet another merger very close behind)

AS actually just bought out QX but never merged. And the CO/PE/FL/NY ordeal, as you say, was such a mess. FL actually shut down on 8/24/86 and CO bought out their assets so I'm not sure if that was actually a merger either. At any rate, yes, those years of 1986 thru 1989 saw an enormous change in the industry with many legacy carriers going into the history books. Many of the hybrid paint schemes the aircraft took on were quite interesting. Also rather interesting is that United never got in on that act however they already had pretty good coverage over the whole country. At that time United boasted on how they flew to all 50 states (yep,even Wilmington DE).

My Early aviation family went through the Jet America and AlaskaAir merger. I remember watch my Family becoming so heart broken when the LGB hometown airline they helped start from the ground up got bought up by the grumpy old Eskimo. It was the 80's so if you we're lucky enough to get a staple you had a job. Otherwise it was Hears the door.(But Sliding Doors happen for a reason my family landed at a little Texas airline which they ended up moving to SAT. And by the 90's I joined that Little Texas airline) Then round 2 I watched my grandfather go through the Flying Tigers and FedEx merger a few years later but my grandfather's wings were already clipped being over age 60. But he Served as a senior manager for Tigers flight Ops he thankfully got a nice golden parachute.

Flyguy

2eng2efficient wrote:

Financially, the mid-to-late 1980s were “crazy years” on Wall Street, with the large investment banks and PE firms looking for deals all over the place. Mergers and acquisitions were the thing to do.

It never stopped. It's shifted a little more to private equity deals but then those buyers can do add-ons.

bfitzflyer wrote:

I think United buying Pan Am's Pacific routes, really kicked off al this merger activity which happened in 85. NW needed domestic feed to compete and from there it was one after another...

That is an interesting insight. I was going in a different direction: by 1986 carriers had seen what deregulation could mean, and recognized that the route networks they had weren't necessarily the route networks they wanted. You start to see the formation of big hubs (and attainment of hub efficiencies) in that era, too.

[quote=" Also rather interesting is that United never got in on that act however they already had pretty good coverage over the whole country. At that time United boasted on how they flew to all 50 states (yep,even Wilmington DE).[/quote]

Not a merger but as stated above United's acquisition of Pan Am's Pacific operations more or less was the start of all of these mergers/acquisitions.

2eng2efficient wrote:

Financially, the mid-to-late 1980s were “crazy years” on Wall Street, with the large investment banks and PE firms looking for deals all over the place. Mergers and acquisitions were the thing to do.

But even more interesting that airlines were at the center of the plot of the movie "Wall Street"

caflyboy wrote:

35 years ago began merger mania in the U.S.. Previously, other mergers had occurred roughly in groups around the same time, but nothing like 1986. Starting in January, 1986 - January 1987 the following mergers would occur:

1/23/86: Northwest and Republic
3/01/86: TWA and Ozark
9/09/86: Delta and Western
11/18/86: American and AirCal*
11/18/86: USAir and PSA*
11/19/86: Alaska and Horizon**
1/12/87: Continental,PeoplExpress,Frontier, and New York Air

* Double dip - two mergers announced same day
** Alaska also began purchasing JetAmerica after a bidding war with Delta. Would operate separately until merged in 1987.

Great memories and great liveries as the airlines merged. Just reflecting back, that was a big year in consolidation for the airlines.

Any thoughts/memories from that time?

06/25/1985 Southwest Bought Muse Air. Shortly after they rebranded it as TranStar before shutting it down in 1987. 70% of all TranStar employees ended up at WN. The 20% that didn't stay were Mad Dog pilots who went to America airlines which was actively growing it's Mad Dog fleet at the time.
HERB and BOB were good friends so they made a good horse trade Where WN would end up taking over leases on the AirCal 737-300 and AA took everything MD80 related from TranStar including offering Pilots interviews at AA.

Flyguy

FLALEFTY wrote:

I remember these mergers.

Northwest gained better access to the southeast by buying Republic, although after the merger, NW greatly reduced RC's old Hughes AirWest routes out west.

Delta's acquisition of Western gave Delta a much larger presence in the west. They gained a hub at SLC and a precious market share increase at LAX.

Ozark was about to go under when TWA bought them. However, adding Ozark gave TWA a fortress hub at STL. Unfortunately, TWA ended up with a pile of debt as a result of the merger.

I was surprised when American bought AirCal in 1986. While they did gain better market share at popular airports like SNA, they also ended up disposing of all of the AirCal fleet a few years later. Ironically, they did not even get the 8 MD-80's that AirCal had ordered earlier in the 1980's. All of those MD-80's were sold prior to the merger in 1985 and early 1986.

USAir bought PSA with the full intention of maintaining the legacy PSA network along the west coast. However, they struggled to tie their west coast network to USAir's core, east coast operations. For this reason, the PSA network was pulled down by USAir in the early-1990's and the MD-80's were moved east to service the CLT and PIT hubs.

Alaska picked up a good feeder airline in Horizon, which allowed them to extend services down the Pacific Coast and into the Mountain West.

The marriages of Continental, PeopleExpress, Frontier and New York Air was a bizarre mess orchestrated by the notorious, Frank Lorenzo. Although realistically, I doubt PeopleExpress, Frontier and New York Air would have survived the 1980's had they tried to go it alone. All three were in financial trouble. As for the post-merger Continental, they were headed for some turbulent times, which included two trips to the bankruptcy court.

Actually Continental probably made out the best from the mid-late Eighties mergers. They went through CH-11 once, not twice, after their mergers with PE, NY Air etc..( 1991-1993). They did go through CH-11 one other time, but it was before all the mid-'80s mergers, it was 1983. Continental was the only US major carrier not to declare bankruptcy after 9/11, them and Southwest. Continental was the first major carrier, besides Southwest, to return to profitability after 9/11.

American, United, US Airways 2x, America West, NWA, Delta all went through CH-11 in the decade after 9/11.

Of all those mid-late Eighties mergers what remains:

Continental still has the Newark hub from PeoplExpress, and somewhat from NY Air. And it's been one of their most important operations.
Delta still has Salt Lake City after their Western merger, LAX has come and gone in terms of size.
American got rid of most of the AirCal operation
US Air got rid of the PSA network, the Dayton hub, the BWI hub from Piedmont. Charlotte remains strong with AA today.
Delta, through their merger with NWA, got rid of the Memphis hub from Republic.

The wave of airline mergers and consolidation that happened in the 1980s were a result of the industry's deregulation which happened in the late 1970s. All of these mergers in one way or another were a mess. The complexities of stitching together two airlines (let alone 4 in the case of Texas Air consolidating Continental, Frontier, New York Air and People Express) is never easy and an operational headache given all the technology, seniority, scheduling, and rationalization that needs to happen in unison.

Some things that did stand out (in no particular order):

TWA acquiring Ozark was perhaps a smaller event than many of the rest, and yes, it did give TW a serious and expansive midwest hub at STL, but in the long run, did little to help TWA overcome major hurdles it faced in the second half of the 1980s.

The fact that USAir could not make PSA's western presence work with its East Coast route map, further enlarged with Piedmont says a lot about USAir's management at the time. It was a golden, once in a lifetime chance to make USAir a true national carrier, but it lacked the planes and the hubs in the right places to make that work. By the time the USAirways brand finally disappeared (it was never loved and never achieved a real service hallmark), it was still essentially an East Coast carrier as it always ways, with a large hub in Phoenix. Again, hubs in the wrong places.

American's intent with AirCal was to remove a competitor, a strategy it repeated in the 1990s with Reno Air, and again in 2001 with TWA. AA saw these as opportunities to generate more efficiency in the industry. We all know how this all played out, for American, and for the industry.

The outcomes of merging Continental, Frontier, People Express, and NY Air were years of truly awful service, a mis-matched fleet of largely old and inefficient planes and a clear path to a second corporate bankruptcy for Continental in 1990. But, the legacy of this mess was a very profitable hub at EWR (it was CO's most profitable one) and remains a key asset today to UA.

Fast forward to the 2005-2013 time frame, where more consolidation began with US/HP and ended with US/AA in 2013, things look a lot different. Service did suffer at the start with DL/NW, but it is widely perceived as one of the best executed mergers in the industry of all time, and led to a much stronger company until COVID. Arguments of collusion could be made though as both NW and DL filed Chapter 11 in the same month in 2005 and had CEOs that had swapped roles, thus creating intimate knowledge of the other's operation.

AA and US from an integration standpoint, went pretty smoothly. Not much in the way of technology issues or major operational meltdowns.

UA and CO was generally a mess and took about 8 years to sort out. Enough said there.

UA and EA were absent from the mania in 1986 as theirs were in 1985.

United Purchases Pan Am's Pacific Network in 85
Eastern is Purchased by Texas Air and assets are shifted

ContinentalEWR wrote:

The fact that USAir could not make PSA's western presence work with its East Coast route map, further enlarged with Piedmont says a lot about USAir's management at the time. It was a golden, once in a lifetime chance to make USAir a true national carrier, but it lacked the planes and the hubs in the right places to make that work. By the time the USAirways brand finally disappeared (it was never loved and never achieved a real service hallmark), it was still essentially an East Coast carrier as it always ways, with a large hub in Phoenix. Again, hubs in the wrong places.

Oh, how badly USAir did with its take-over of PSA...

"Well, gee, I guess there's nobody left for us to take over...I guess we'll just have to merge with this one leftover airline called PSA!"

From day one, US began in interest to p*** off literally every single PSA flyer by treating them as unimportant tag-ons to their much more important east coast routes, US began scheduling most its west coast and intra-California routes as tag-ons from cross-continental flights, delaying most of these planes and killing their market share.

Just like the Hughes Air West merger with Republic and the subsequent abandonment of the west coast, US found itself driven out of the west to concentrate on their other money-losing adventures in the east. However, let us not forget that PSA's last act before her forced marriage and nearly immediate disappearance was to bequeath the operation manuals (which US was most definitely NOT interested in!) to a relatively small but intelligent carrier named "Southwest".

Southwest is, to me, the perfect of example of a patient (and long-game playing) airline who has watched and learned from the stupidity of others in order to prevent the mistakes that have been the undoing of so many others. The airlines of the 1980's played "casino capitalism", where they rolled the dice blindly for short-term profits, ruining airlines and systems that could have made money for them. Southwest learned to swoop in and poach these customers before those in control really understood what was going on.

As my username implies, I am a hard core PSA fan, but every time I fly Southwest, I feel like I am flying my hometown carrier. After all, PSA's operation manuals are, in general, still being used, and only the name "Pacific" is missing. But all in all, one merged airline still exists.

bfitzflyer wrote:

I think United buying Pan Am's Pacific routes, really kicked off al this merger activity which happened in 85. NW needed domestic feed to compete and from there it was one after another...

My first thought and recollection upon reading the OP was the attempted Continental/Western merger, which was first proposed in 1978. I'd just started in the industry, so this proposal was a big deal even though it was ultimately shot down.

It is interesting the first round of local service (regional) airline consolidation was 1968 which saw:

Bonanza/Pacific/West Coast become Airwest
Central merged into Frontier
Lake central merged into Allegheny

Then in 86
Frontier into Continental(which included Texas International from 82)
Republic (Air West / North Central / Southern from 79) into Northwest
Ozark into TWA

in 68 they began consolidating with each other, and in 86 they consolidated with the majors.

one offs
72 Mohawk into Allegheny (same time Delta and Northeast merge)
82 Texas International becomes Continental (same year Braniff goes bust)
89 US Air and Piedmont merge

American, United, US Airways 2x, America West, NWA, Delta all went through CH-11 in the decade after 9/11.

HP did not have a BK after 9/11, they've only had one in the mid 90s.

For anyone with a WSJ subscription, here's Scott McCartney from 2008 on the eve of the DL/NW merger talking about previous mergers. He was not impressed. One could call this opinion instead of business reporting, IMHO.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120830393799317821

The names change, but the problems remain. Airline mergers often mean travel headaches for customers -- and they often don't work so well for the airlines involved, either.

"The track record of airline mergers is checkered, with few examples delivering on promised benefits," Standard & Poor's airline analyst Philip Baggaley said in a research report.

Bottom line: Hubs and routes that were able to generate profits before the merger typically survive, and air service that struggled to make money before a merger often disappears after a merger.

"There's no history of anything good that happens in mergers," said Adam Pilarski, senior vice president at Avitas Inc., an aviation-consulting firm. "Two drunks holding each other up is not a good idea."

OzarkD9S wrote:

FLALEFTY wrote:

Ozark was about to go under when TWA bought them. However, adding Ozark gave TWA a fortress hub at STL. Unfortunately, TWA ended up with a pile of debt as a result of the merger.

Ozark made a small profit the last year of it's independence. TWA lost money that same year. Not setting any profit records, but OZ was not "about to go under".

You might want to read this Chicago Tribune article about the TWA/Ozark merger: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct- ... story.html

This quote:

"Icahn noted that both are losing money. TWA has lost a total of $345.6 million since 1979. The international carrier expects a loss of $125 million in the first quarter of 1986.

Ozark ran into the red during the usually profitable summer months and expects to be unprofitable in 1986, Icahn said. The airline reported an operating loss of $1.1 million for 1985. It had an operating profit of $20.1 million in 1984."

If Ozark had tried to go it alone they probably would have disappeared by the Gulf War Recession of 1991. They lacked the cachet with business passengers and especially the aircraft (only 52) to continue expanding from their former regional status into a viable national airline. They were trying to fly aging DC-9's from STL to the west coast, which maxed out their operational capabilities. Ozark's routes to Florida had wild peaks and valleys in demand. They were competing with TWA for business travelers to the east coast cities.

wnflyguy wrote:

06/25/1985 Southwest Bought Muse Air. Shortly after they rebranded it as TranStar before shutting it down in 1987. 70% of all TranStar employees ended up at WN. The 20% that didn't stay were Mad Dog pilots who went to America airlines which was actively growing it's Mad Dog fleet at the time.
HERB and BOB were good friends so they made a good horse trade Where WN would end up taking over leases on the AirCal 737-300 and AA took everything MD80 related from TranStar including offering Pilots interviews at AA.

Flyguy

I'm pretty sure all of TranStar's MD-80s went to Continental Airlines.

TranStar only had 10 MD-80s and here 8 of them...

FLALEFTY wrote:

Ozark was about to go under when TWA bought them. However, adding Ozark gave TWA a fortress hub at STL. Unfortunately, TWA ended up with a pile of debt as a result of the merger.

This is not true. OZ was not about to go under and they were profitable. It was however, going to be difficult for them to grow with TWA at STL and new gates were hard to come by.

Shape of things to come....1986

dcaproducer wrote:

FLALEFTY wrote:

Ozark was about to go under when TWA bought them. However, adding Ozark gave TWA a fortress hub at STL. Unfortunately, TWA ended up with a pile of debt as a result of the merger.

This is not true. OZ was not about to go under and they were profitable. It was however, going to be difficult for them to grow with TWA at STL and new gates were hard to come by.

Thank you dca, the reality of the situation in a nutshell.

What's a Royal West 146 doing in an OC/AA photo gallery?

Y'all have started posting these awesome hybrid livery pictures.... but no one has posted my personal favorite!

Just days before the Northwest/Republic merger.... we have two 757s.... One in basic Northwest colors with Republic titles and one in basic Republic colors with Northwest titles!

Soon after the merger at RC we went down to the hangers on 494 when we heard they had been or getting started repainted with rollers and paint brushes. No Lie True Story. It was a sad site to see Herman getting covered in RED paint. The RC guys had been told to start painting the planes. I walked up to a 727, and you could see the roller bubbles in the paint.. Made us all want to cry. Our RR powered 757 went to HP. NWA over painted HP colors right over the RC colors. Some years later I talked with a HP Ramp Trainer he confirmed my story about the 757 over paint. HP had no idea until they striped the planes for repaint in their new colors. Talk about added weight. RC was brought together by Hal Carr, North Centrals Chairman...Republic was dismantled by Steven Wolf, Then sold off to NWA.

IIRC, some of the RC MD80 went to Muse under sublease as RC borrowed money under high interest rate to buy Hughes Air West. IIRC 1 to 1 1/2 % above prime which at the time was very high.

departedflights wrote:

Y'all have started posting these awesome hybrid livery pictures.... but no one has posted my personal favorite!

Just days before the Northwest/Republic merger.... we have two 757s.... One in basic Northwest colors with Republic titles and one in basic Republic colors with Northwest titles!

There is the first and second set, I just didn't have them together like this one! I have the NW with Republic Titles an the Republic with Northwest Titles in the second set. The difference is that the republic with Northwest Titles has a red tail already!

Great shot of these two together. I am trying to find the USA experimental schemes they tried on the BAE's before they went to the red, blue and sliver livery.

USPIT10L wrote:

What's a Royal West 146 doing in an OC/AA photo gallery?

It was leased from RW during 1987 while the take over was being integrated.

departedflights wrote:

Y'all have started posting these awesome hybrid livery pictures.... but no one has posted my personal favorite!

Just days before the Northwest/Republic merger.... we have two 757s.... One in basic Northwest colors with Republic titles and one in basic Republic colors with Northwest titles!

I'm not sure what's more impressive, this livery situation or the fact that they were running 757s on DTW-YYZ!

caflyboy wrote:

USPIT10L wrote:

What's a Royal West 146 doing in an OC/AA photo gallery?

It was leased from RW during 1987 while the take over was being integrated.

Thanks....just noticed the AA titles on the tail......

New York Air

BAINY3 wrote:

Awesome! I was working my way back west. Now I only have PSA. Thanks for the adds!

UpNAWAy wrote:

American, United, US Airways 2x, America West, NWA, Delta all went through CH-11 in the decade after 9/11.

HP did not have a BK after 9/11, they've only had one in the mid 90s.

Exactly. I was there during bankruptcy and during 9/11

I love all of this talk and the pictures as well but this brings up a question I’ve thought about for a while now. I apologize if I’m going off the thread but I wonder what changed the branding for mergers. As noted above mergers back then had overnight changes to airport signage to painting of aircraft. However the more recent mergers basically did nothing in this regard with the minor exception of some US Airways aircraft being painted in the full new AA look with a US decal until the merger was official. Just wondering what changed, I love the old hybrid liveries.