I really feel for the VS staff who seem to be hanging on by their fingernails but let us not forget that the legal action re BAs's fuel charges still has yet to come to a head and I for one think it is premature to think about mergers and take overs until this case had time to run its course.
The only people to benefit from this are VS's lawyers and their
PR teams who will be burning a lot of midnight oil if this came anywhere near to coming off.
In my view it is simply not an answer for VS & BD to merge; both airlines are in hard times and simply running to a merger would not solve any of the fundamental management weaknesses that VS in particular continues to possess.