April 15, 2008
The chief executive of Delta Air Lines said he did not foresee any regulatory block to the company’s deal to buy rival Northwest Airlines announced late on Monday.
“The regulatory issue is going to be confined to the United States,” said Delta CEO Richard Anderson in an interview on CNBC on Tuesday, referring to last week’s Department of Transportation decision to grant Northwest antitrust immunity in coordinating schedules with its SkyTeam alliance partners, including Delta.
“In the United States we have not quite 20 percent market share,” he said. “You still have many other carriers, including many discount carriers, that have free access to every market in the United States.”
In a separate interview, Anderson said he was hoping to win over Northwest’s pilots, despite the lack of any agreement between Delta and Northwest pilots, which the airline had originally aimed to achieve before a deal was announced.
“We’re going to work hard, and we tried very hard to have an agreement with both the Northwest and Delta pilots,” said Anderson in an earlier interview on NBC’s “Today” show, addressing an issue that some analysts say could pose a serious block to a successful merger.
“We want to have, prior to closing, an agreement with both the Northwest and Delta pilots,” he added. “We’re halfway there, it’s part of the process and we think we’ll be successful in getting the Northwest pilots under the Delta collective bargaining agreement with a resolution on the seniority between the two groups prior to closing.”
(Reuters)