American Airlines, US Airways and the Creation of the World’s Largest Airline

The 2013 merger of American Airlines and US Airways marked a major step in the consolidation of the U.S. airline industry. A young management team that began plotting mergers a decade earlier designed a brilliant strategy to seize an industry prize. In doing so, it enlisted the help of unions who engineered one of the labor movement’s biggest corporate victories. The airlines’ histories and the inside story of the takeover is told by two veteran airline reporters.

Former Miami Herald reporter, Ted Reed is a business and labor writer. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Communications consultant Dan Reed has covered American Airlines for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and USA Today. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

Ted Reed and Dan Reed
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 212
Bibliographic Info: 44 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2014
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7783-8
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1775-6
Imprint: McFarland

Preface by Ted Reed  1
Introduction  3
1. Uncle Ed Builds an Airline  5
2. Call Me Butch  16
3. Teaching an Eagle to Fly  26
4. Al Casey’s Five Big Decisions  38
5. Our Son of a Bitch  48
6. How Bob Crandall Changed the Airline Industry  56
7. America West: The Little Airline That Could  63
8. The House That Jerry Built  73
9. How Stephen Wolf Almost Fixed US Airways  84
10. Plan B as in Bankruptcy  95
11. America West Looks East  104
12. The Delta Debacle  113
13. The War Between East and West  121
14. A Tough Act to Follow  131
15. A Moral Man Loses a Battle  141
16. Labor Takes the Lead  152
17. Let’s Meet for Dinner  162
18. Hey, What About Us?  171
19. Breaking Down the Doors  179
Chapter Notes  189
Bibliography  197
Index  199