The past several weeks have possibly been the strangest period I’ve ever seen in the airline industry. A couple of weeks ago, we learned how United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby secretly proposed to President Trump the concept of merging with American Airlines. This is based on an airline “trade deficit” argument (that by creating one US mega airline, they could better compete with foreign carriers), which makes no sense.

American publicly “rejected” pursuing this merger (again, based just on what was rumored). Well, today Kirby put out a statement explaining his logic for wanting the merger, saying he’ll let it go for now (since American isn’t interested), yet he continues to make the case for why he thinks it makes sense (hint: it doesn’t).

Kirby’s statement on United & American merging

This is so bizarre that I don’t even want to paraphrase it, so let me just share the entire statement that Kirby published (it’s long, and I’ll share my take in the next section):

I can’t believe Kirby is making such a poor argument

On the one hand, now everything makes sense. Kirby has spent the 15+ months since Trump’s second inauguration sucking up to him like no other airline executive has, and I have to imagine that the hope of getting a merger with American approved was the basis of that. It’s clear that Kirby knew that if he ever had a chance of this vision becoming a reality, it would have to be under Trump.

One can’t possibly put into words how bad it would be for the competitive landscape if two of the “big three” carriers merged. But Kirby’s argument seems to be a combination of grasping at straws, and hoping to make people patriotic, or something:

• Kirby basically says United is better to fly than American, so by having United take over American, more people could fly on a good airline

• Kirby basically acknowledges fares would go up (he has made it clear that even when oil prices go down, he hopes United can keep fares up and boost margins), but he’s saying fares don’t matter, but instead, value is what counts; people don’t want cheap tickets, they want bluetooth audio on planes, or something, and consumer choice be damned!

• This concept of creating a competitive airline globally is what would be worst for competition, since it would essentially destroy the balance of joint ventures, which is what keeps long haul airfare competitive (it’s useful to have three sets of these, one with each of the “big three” alliances)

• Then there’s just talk of the US economy in general, and this is where it gets the most ridiculous; Kirby talks about how the combined airline will have lots of union jobs, will strengthen US aircraft manufacturing, etc. (that’s already happening, and for that matter, United has also been ordering hundreds of Airbus planes)

I was hoping that Kirby’s argument in favor of such a deal would be a bit more sophisticated, but it really isn’t. It’s essentially just somewhere between trying to call in favors to Trump, and trying to pose as being patriotic. The idea is to completely overlook concerns about domestic competition by making this all about international service.

The only logic I can come up with here is that Kirby is so desperate to overtake Delta (his biggest career goal) and to destroy American (it’s an airline he has a vengeance against), and he thinks this is what can accomplish both of those things in one swoop. But my goodness… yowzers! I think this “big, bold vision” is more about Kirby’s ego as CEO than about anything that would be good for consumers.

Okay Kirby, can we just move along with JetBlue now, please? 😉

Bottom line

United CEO Scott Kirby has released a statement about his desire to acquire American, while also acknowledging that American isn’t interested, so this won’t happen for the foreseeable future. While I generally respect Kirby, the mental gymnastics required to gaslight consumers into thinking that this would be good for them is beyond comprehension.

What do you make of Kirby’s statement about this “big, bold vision” of his?