The Federal Aviation Administration is allowing the merged American/USAir to take the next step on its merger path; it announced Monday that it will issue the “single operating certificate (SOC)” that will remove the last barriers to the company operating as a single airline under a single name and FAA call sign.
That doesn’t mean USAir will be gone that quickly; both names will be on the new certificate with the understanding that USAir will be deleted once everything is done. The remaining key parts of “everything” include the big one of merging the reservation systems, as well as physically merging and realigning the fleet. That’s not expected before the end of 2015. But USAir flights from April 8 on will operate under the American call sign of AAL and “American”, rather than AWE and “Cactus,” which were inherited in the USAir/America West merger a few years ago.
