It’s hard to pass up the “best network in the world,” but I think it was the right call for CO. They are really a well run company. Fixing and integrating UA would have taken years, and the cohesiveness of CO would have been lost.

Meanwhile, it seems almost a certainty that UA and US will merge, and Doug Parker will take the reigns. Being the CEO of the world’s largest airline seems to have been his ambition in life and dreams sometimes do come true. Here’s a guy who started with next to nothing in the airline biz (CEO of struggling America West) and look at him now. And he’s got the right instincts to make this work. It ain’t gonna be pretty, it ain’t gonna be easy, and it ain’t gonna be Continental, but he’ll do it.

So I guess this makes the other potential loser here the city of Tempe, because I think Parker and his team are going to have to decamp to Chicago.