I'm not John, but.... The classic argument would be the mergers reduced competition drastically in too many markets. I can see this argument in the cases of Republic & Northwest (upper Midwest) and Piedmont & US Air (eastern Rustbelt). I don't know how much Delta and Western overlapped before their merger, though. Clay asked whether the US government let major airlines such as AA, UA, and US fail. I think it might -- but local and state governments might try to keep those airlines flying. For example, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia all have a lot to lose if US goes under. Not that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is flush with cash, but can the state afford to let US go under? Similarly, Chicago and the state of Illinois would get incredibly nervous if both AA and UA were close to shutting down; suddenly ORD is close to a ghost town. DFW without AA? SFO without UA? DEN without UA? There would huge economic impacts to the O&D traffic to each of the mega-hubs, and consequently to the local economies. jetBlue, Southwest, Frontier and AirTran couldn't expand quickly enough to fill the voids, no matter how much they might want to. Nick At 11:03 AM 3/21/2003 -0500, Allan9 wrote: >John, >Why would you say the mergers should not have been approved? >Al > >>From: John Kurtzke [mailto:kurtzke@xxxxxx] >>Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 2:25 PM >>Subject: Re: Re-regulate Again >> >>Department of Justice allowed some mergers to go forward which should >>have been stopped. (Republic-Northwest, Delta-Western, US Air-Piedmont, >>to name a few.) >> >>john kurtzke >> >>kurtzke@xxxxxx