[Goldmember]

Welcome to Wall Street (ever see that movie, involves an airline!)- Management only has one goal, increase shareholder value, period. Do it, or they're out. Problem is, they're having to do it with a commodity product with ever increasing cost. So, what do they do? Enter a cycle of mergers and splits, it's basically the ONLY thing they can do to make it seem like they are doing ANYTHING. I mean honestly, what would you do to increase shareholder value? You can't reinvent the wheel. Transportation is transportation and offering a "better" product just doesn't hold water these days, demand is for low cost point to point travel. Period. The guys in management don't have meetings about "how can we make this a better company? How can we become the most respected airline in the business? How can we make this the best company to work for in the industry?" The only meetings they hold are "how can we increase shareholder value?" Positive buzz from a possible merger get's the wall street speculators moving, giving the stock a quick boost and then, my personal favorite, gives management an excuse for more time: "folks, bear with us as we are on the right path to greatness, we are just experiencing growing pains associated with the dificulty in combining two great companies." It buys them time with creditors, their shareholders, and sometimes it can get employees to make concessions with promises that after the initial dificult times, things are going to be better in the long run...yeah, we've seen how that one plays out.