美司法部放行美国航空和全美航空合并在即

Now, US Airways and American Airlines are free to merge after they reached a settlement with the US Justice Department. In August, the government -- the US government, that is -- filed an anti-trust suit against the airlines that said the merger would restrict competition and drive up prices for consumers on hundreds of routes, AMR and US Airways.

But the two airlines involved were determined to see this through. Now, an agreement has been reached with conditions. The airlines are required to sell 104 slots at Washington's Reagan Airport, National Airport, as it used to be called to those of us in old money.

Those slots will go to low-cost carriers. If they hadn't got rid of the slots at DCA, the airlines would have controlled 69 percent of takeoff and landing slots at this crucial airport. Many of you will be familiar with that left turn as you're about -- or is the right turn? -- or whatever one, as you go out to land and you go over the monuments.

Other divestitures required by the US government: 34 slots at New York's LaGuardia, rights and gates at Boston Logan, Chicago's O'Hare, Dallas Love Field, LAX Los Angeles International, and MIA Miami Airport. All of which the two carriers have to either give up slots, gates, or rights.

Now, Tom Horton, the president and chief exec of American said in this statement, "This agreement allows us to take the final steps in creating the new American Airlines." And he continued, "There's much more work ahead of us, but we're energized by the challenge."