Will proposed merger affect future flights?
 

Good Morning,

Just a simple question for all the "experts" regarding upcoming flights.

My wife, daughter and I are booked on NW for a trip to Paris in November...

MCO-MSP-CDG (outbound)
CDG-DTW-MCO (return)

Do we need to be concerned with major itinerary changes as a result of the merger with Delta?

Thanks for any repsonses.

The "merger" is off in the distance, if at all. Look at Flyertalk.com for more information than you can possibly use.

In short, no. This is for two reasons:

1) They will not be far enough along in any potential integration to have made those sort of decisions.

2) The whole point of the merger is to increase the number of international (read: profitable) flights. I just don't see them cancelling too many of these routes.

< the merger is off in the distance >

Maybe, maybe not. DL announced this morning it had reached an agreement with its pilots and at least one source thought a merger with NW will be announced next week. Guess we'll have to wait and see...

Other than that, I agree with travelgourment's assessment.

Merger announcement will probably be next week. There is also a possiblity that it could be merged but run like KLM and Air France-two separate airlines under one umbrella.

I seem to recall reading about a week ago that these airlines had received permission to share revenues on international flights.

While that is short of a full merger, it does imply that there will be some level of coordination of such flights and, while international flights are real moneymakers, I would think each would now be looking at trying to get their international flights fuller. So its certainly not impossible that one airline will cancel a given flight and place those passengers on a similar flight of the other airline.

So I would suggest you monitor your reservation daily in case there is a change, so you can take the appropriate action, such as adjusting your seats and monitoring connection times.

Nowadays most international flights(particularly during spring,summer and fall) are packed so cancellations wouldn't make sense.

CDG-DTW will definitely be around.

MSP-CDG should be there too. If not, they'll reroute you anyways (and probably save you some flying time).

Itineraries (like your domestic connection) can change with or without a merger.

I have NWA and Delta FF accounts so I assume they will be combined? More miles for me?

Yes, but after the miles are combined, all will expire in what, 18 months? Right now Worldperks miles don't expire. :)

24 months for Delta, but if you aren't flying in two years then why have an FF account.

I think that it is a waste to think about FF miles if you don't earn at least 25k miles every year or two. Of course, this doesn't have to be from flying, and can be from CC spend or the like.

And if you earn only a few miles from flying, FF miles should be way down on your list of concerns when buying a ticket, well behind price and schedule.

Technically, it can be anywhere from 24 to almost 36 months for DL. Activity extends your expiration to Dec 31st 2 years forward.

Good news for me... My orphaned ~3,000 WP miles may soon to join my Skymiles.

Bad news... If CO and UA merge and go with *A, soon I can't use those combined Skymiles on CO.

Now I wish I had applied for NWA and Delta credit cards to up my miles some more before the merger. I did take advantage of the AmEx offer of 50,000 points last month.

Why do you need to &quot;wish&quot;? They only <b>announced</b> a merger - which will take months if everything goes smoothly - to complete it.

You can go apply for your CCs right now!

I have around 5000 WP orphan miles and DH has around 11,000. Applying for the WP visa now would be a good idea except I can't remember which type(s) of WP Visa cards we've already applied for in the past and I don't think they're churnable #o I'll have to look through my files and see if I kept anything.

Eh? Maybe it's time for me to apply for UA's and NW's cards!

$55 (15K miles) for the NW Plat and $90 (20K miles) for the Signature.

I think I'll apply for the Plat, as the extra 5K miles is not worth the extra annual fees.

I searched FT and found a link for a no annual fee offer http://tinyurl.com/5q9gau

It was posted back in Feb but I don't see an expiration date.