2 cents

Notthe: now you're confusing me. I absolutely agree that DEregulation was a bummer, no contest -- priced a lot of people out of the market. Of course I don't think you should attend a conference-call funeral -- that's a distortion of my point about business travel. (As an aside, I will say that airlines' treatment of people with family emergencies seems to be getting less compassionate -- IF you have documentation from a funeral home, THEN you can get a fare equal to 1/2 the REGULAR fare, which is often still well above plan-ahead discounts. This is mean.)

The motivation of the mergers is of course money, but now the possibility that USAir would ever take on competition against United on any routes (or v.v.) has been completely eliminated, which was the reason for the marriage of these two companies.