Bigger Is Not Always Better

If the proposed Delta buyout actually happens, it will create the world's largest airline. This means huge. Anyone who has ever tried to complain to any aspect of big corporate America about anything knows that bigger is not necessarily better.

abcNews reporter John Nance gives us the three reasons:

• First, while any change in the workplace will be automatically resisted by those employees who find change threatening by definition, the serious psychological impact of a mega merger on tens of thousands of airline employees - including pilots - has historically created decimated attitudes that in turn can breed the "I'm afraid you've got me confused with someone who gives a damn" school of customer service.

• Second, even the best orchestrated mergers, the level of confusion that swirls for years around everything from the airline's Web sites, credit cards and job culture to the relocated reservation centers (sometimes in India), work rules and thousand of potentially conflicting procedures, are enough to force Job into analysis.

• Third, airline mergers begat airline mergers because the nonmerged will scurry around looking for a way to get bigger faster in order to compete. Unfortunately, that means that if Delta falls to U.S. Airways, the courtship of American, United, Northwest and Continental by each other and just about every other airline out there will end up providing better prime time soap opera than "Desperate Housewives."

And the ultimate fallout? We'll end up with fewer airlines overall, and larger operations charging higher prices, because of reduced competition, while providing reduced frequency and service. In other words, just what we need in an industry that has already learned how to squeeze seats together tightly enough to assault your kneecaps as they try to pack every plane with passengers paying too little to cover the costs. [Get full Story ¦ abcNews]