United-Continental merger

Aviation news: Stockholders approve Continental-United merger

Continental CEO Jeff Smisek / Image via erickayne.com

United and Continental airlines stockholders voted to approve carriers' merger on Friday. American and European regulators have already signaled their approval of the $3.2 billion stock swap.

Associate Press reports that the companies expect it will be at least a year before federal authorities approve their request to fly as one airline, which will be called United but painted in Continental's colors. Continental CEO Jeff Smisek will take up the merged company's reins.

Smisek hinted at layoffs Friday, saying there will be overlapping jobs, though he didn't give any numbers.

Even though United and Continental overlap on few routes, "losing a major competitor is likely to make prices rise," said Rick Seaney of FareCompare.com.

The companies say they compete with low-cost carriers on about three-fourths of their U.S. routes, which will help keep fares down.

Comments

Post new comment

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Subject:

Comment: *

• Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
• Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <h1><h2><cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><img><span>
• Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
• Images can be added to this post.
• You may insert YouTube videos with [youtube:ID]

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA

This question is to prevent automated spam submissions.

What code is in the image?: *

Enter the characters shown in the image without spaces, also respect upper and lower case.