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.
If BD and VS don't merge (which I expect), then VS needs to take a hard look at its long-term strategy. VS has a major problem in that all three of the alliances have their sights set on growing their presence at LHR and with so many airlines now after slots its options for growing at LHR are very limited. VS is up against *A consolidating at T1, Skyteam at T4, and Oneworld at T3/T5.
The VS strategy of being a self-styled "challenger brand" and just moaning about everything BA does is long overdue for a revamp. Richard Branson may think he's positioning himself as a consumer champion in oppposing the AA/BA/IB ATI application, but the extremely hostile response to his article in the Telegraph indicates that there is no groundswell of support for him:
Dinosaurs BA and AA should not be given a free meal ticket to merge - Telegraph