Pitting Philadelphia against Pittsburgh won't fly, governor says Gov. Ed Rendell vowed yesterday that US Airways will have to offer "absolute, concrete commitments" that include job gains if it wants help from the commonwealth. And he insisted that the airline won't get the chance to play a divide-and-conquer strategy, pitting Philadelphia against Pittsburgh, in trying to win aid and cost cuts. "The state can ensure that they don't play Philadelphia against Pittsburgh," Rendell said as officials from both cities and the state get ready to sit down next week for a strategy-plotting session. "We're not going to let them blackmail us. We're not going to let them extort us. We're not going to let them hold us hostage." Rendell offered his assessment after talking to school students at Altoona Area High School -- going before about 575 members of regional student councils to sound a rallying call against the same problem he faces in the US Airways situation: keeping jobs and people in the commonwealth. Way to Go! Thanks to the Herculean efforts of the US Airways pricing and marketing teams and our ad agency, we were able to quickly get fare sale ads into the media yesterday as a competitive response to another carrier. Our pricing and advertising employees scrambled on Tuesday to meet newspaper submission deadlines, and, according to Stephen Usery, vice president of Marketing and Revenue Management, they "begged, pleaded and negotiated as if their lives depended on it" to get deadline extensions to be sure our ads made it into all the key media. Among the many who worked on the project, Usery particularly acknowledged Bonnie Gagermeier and Allison Edmondson in Marketing, Linda Caplan and Renee Brown in Pricing and Eisner Communications, our ad agency, for their efforts, which kept some at work until the wee hours of the morning. "This is the sort of effort that people across US Airways put in every day to keep us competitive. It frequently comes at real personal sacrifice and we rarely have time to recognize it. To everyone involved, I say, 'Thanks!" Usery said. American Airlines reaches union deal; CEO quits American Airlines Chairman and Chief Executive Donald Carty resigned Thursday as labor leaders and negotiators for the carrier reached a tentative deal to help the company avert bankruptcy. GERARD ARPEY, 44, the company?s president, will replace Carty as chief executive, while board member Edward Brennan, 69, the retired chairman of Sears Roebuck, will take over as chairman. Carty?s resignation came after the boards of the pilots and transport workers unions approved the new concessions package. The flight attendants? union reportedly balked at the tentative deal, which improves potential bonuses for employees and shortens the length of concessions by one year to five years. The deal would also provide incentives for ?additional cash compensation,? said John Darrah, president of the pilots? union. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.