US Airways boss: We like you American, but we're not going to wait forever

Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Author: Andrea Ahles

US Airways chief executive Doug Parker is speaking to the National Press Club right now and in his remarks, he said a merger with American Airlines should occur while American is in bankruptcy.

"US Airways is here now and we're ready to do this now, there is no guarantee that will be the case forever," Parker told Washington D.C. journalists attending the lunch.

We will update this post as Parker answers questions but in the meantime, here is Parker's prepared remarks that can be downloaded. (Link opens PDF file.)

UPDATE: Most of what Parker talked about at the Press Club luncheon, he has said before, either in newspaper interviews or on calls with investors and analysts. Here's a few notable things he said today:

On US Airway's pilot seniority issues: The nice thing about this merger is since the time we closed the America West-US Airways merger there has been some federal legislation passed called the Mccaskkil bond law. And that law now requires that unions from two separate airlines in a merger, they need to go to binding arbitration. Once the binding arbitration is complete, that’s the list. That’s federal law for seniority lists. Had that been in the place back when we did the America West-US Airways merger, we wouldn’t have this problem. If we do this merger with American that will be the process in place and would actually resolve this problem. That’s not the reason we want to do the merger, we can resolve it on our own, but its one of the nice benefits of it.

On who supports the US Airways plan of a merger with American: Everyone we’ve talked to supports this once they learn the facts. In terms of the actual creditors committee itself, we haven’t had the opportunity yet to present to the creditors committee. Once we do I’m certain we will have a unanimous vote for our plan.

On why American's management team doesn't support a merger with US Airways: I find it noteworthy that the only opposition that seems to exist to this merger is the senior management at American. We have full Wall Street support. We have employees support. We have bondholders support. What we don’t have is the support of the senior management team. I don’t want to guess to why it is they don’t support it but we are hopeful that at some point they will.