Delta’s hometown Journal-Constitution weighs in this morning with a look at what it calls “pilots union brinkmanship.” The Atlanta paper quotes a Georgia business college dean: “The one real card that the Northwest pilots have is the one to delay the deal. … It’s a perfect gambit, and it’s the last chance they have to pull it.” He says that after this “posturing and positioning,” he expects the deal will get done.

The Wall Street Journal puts the pilot talks in the context of the labor movement’s shift toward a strategy of seeing mergers not as a worst-case scenario to be opposed at all costs, but as an opportunity. If the pilots remain at an impasse, the WSJ says, “the airlines could agree to announce their merger anyway, but they don’t want to do that because of the risks involved.”

The Northwest and Delta boards were expected to meet last night. If they did, they kept things buttoned up tight, because no word of any meetings appears to have leaked out. But one thing seems clear: No merger announcement coming this morning.

(Housekeeping note: We had a glitch yesterday that caused comments to fail to appear on the blog right away. It should be fixed now, so comment at will.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 12:35 am and is filed under NWA-Delta merger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.