United Airlines made an approach to Delta Air Lines last year about the possibility of combining the two carriers, people familiar with the matter told reporters. The outreach included a direct phone call from United Chief Executive Scott Kirby to Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian as part of United's pitch.
Delta executives evaluated the proposal and carried out preliminary due diligence to assess whether a deal made sense. Those exploratory discussions did not progress beyond the early stages, and both airlines subsequently abandoned the idea.
Following the aborted talks with Delta, United pursued merger discussions with American Airlines. That overture to American was rejected, according to the same sources.
Context within the industry
United and Delta are each among the four dominant carriers that now shape the U.S. airline market after a series of industry consolidations over recent decades. Officials and market watchers have long expected that a merger between the largest carriers would provoke antitrust concerns because of the degree of market concentration such a transaction would create.
The newly reported outreachs underscore a broader pattern in which major U.S. airlines have, at times, explored transformational consolidation. Some business leaders eyed the prospect of larger deals amid expectations that a subsequent administration might take a more permissive posture toward mergers. Even so, any tie-up between United and either Delta or American would have resulted in an unprecedented aggregation of market share and almost certainly drawn intensive scrutiny from federal regulators and state authorities.
Market and deal climate
While certain corporate leaders were optimistic that large-scale transactions could be pursued, the article notes that economic uncertainty and heightened scrutiny of major agreements have complicated the environment for negotiating and completing mergers. That dynamic has made it harder for companies to advance talks toward definitive agreements.
The matter remains illustrative of both the strategic ambitions some airlines entertained and the regulatory and market headwinds that can halt consolidation among the largest U.S. carriers.