Great News! United Airlines biggest Airline. (Atlanta: insurance, to buy, live)

[FlyiMetro]

Just read the news that Continental & United merged companies. Delta is no longer # 1...United Airlines based out of Chicago is. Interesting.....

[waronxmas]

It's going to be interesting what happens.

Delta will still continue to have the largest fleet at 966 planes to the new United's 696. United will have about 100 more routes though...if they don't cut anything post merger. It's still yet to be seen if United will take the passenger crown from Delta too.

I wouldn't be surprised if Delta is sniffing around for some other airline to buyout, err, "merge" with.

Just another notch on the pole though in the long lasting Chicago vs Atlanta airline battle.

[ATLnSAV]

I dont know why this is anything to celebrate. At the rate corporate America is going we're all one day gonna fly on "The Airline" bank at "The Bank" shop at "The Store" buy cars from "The Dealership" and get insurance from GEICO.

[noah]

Actually the #1 airline for passengers in the U.S is now Southwest Airlines. The full fair airlines fight over the business class passengers though, where they see the money is to be made.

Originally Posted by waronxmas

.It's still yet to be seen if United will take the passenger crown from Delta too.

[FlyiMetro]

There really is nothing wrong with being 2nd best, its not like Delta will be losing flights because of this merger, but Chicago will definately gain quite a bit of flights. I say good for them. United just became a Mega Powerhouse in this deal, nothing Delta Airlines could really do to prevent it. Everything must change in time. Might as well except the facts.

[Akhenaton06]

It's funny that a couple of decades ago, the government broke up certain enterprises because it was said they constituted a monopoly, but now they are reconsolidating and things are basically going back to the way they were before.

[arjay57]

I don't see how Atlanta would be affected by the United Airlines merger. Delta is a colossal enterprise with several thousand daily flights and Atlanta has air service that is almost unparalleled anywhere on the planet.

[ATLnSAV]

YES people like to dismiss Atlanta's airport and Delta's presence there as just being a layover hub but for those of us who live there -- and the hundreds of companies who do business and have located in Atlanta -- it means being a 30 minute train ride from 3,000 daily non-stop flights to every city, country and continent on earth -- except Antartica. LOL.

[MikeandIke27]

Originally Posted by FlyiMetro

There really is nothing wrong with being 2nd best, its not like Delta will be losing flights because of this merger, but Chicago will definately gain quite a bit of flights. I say good for them. United just became a Mega Powerhouse in this deal, nothing Delta Airlines could really do to prevent it. Everything must change in time. Might as well except the facts.

You really dont like Atlanta do you lol

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by noah

Actually the #1 airline for passengers in the U.S is now Southwest Airlines. The full fair airlines fight over the business class passengers though, where they see the money is to be made.

For 2009 they weren't:

World's largest airlines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Delta passengers carried in 2009: 161,049,000
Southwest passengers carried in 2009: 101,339,000

The same was true in 2008, but in 2007 and 2006 Southwest had more passengers than Delta.