“(With) the historic partnership we have developed with labor, we will have 100,000 employees on day one all pulling in the same direction.”
He bonded with those leaders, enabling the merger.įrom the failed Delta bid, 'We learned it is important to have labor on board upfront, as much as possible,” said Kirby, then president of US Airways, in a 2013 interview. He had secret meetings with the leaders of unions representing pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and fleet service workers. Kirby was put in charge of the effort, which at first seemed an extreme long shot. The key to the American bid was to win support from American’s unions. In 2008, they went after United, and were seemingly played by a United management team that preferred to merge with Continental. In 2004, they engineered a merger with bankrupt US Airways. In 2006, just 14 months after that merger closed, they went after Delta and failed spectacularly.
