Aviation: A bid for American Airlines?

A report citing "people familiar with the matter" says that other carriers and possible private equity funds are interested in the loss-making AA which, somehow, manages to make even new aircraft look dated with a livery that never worked well and today just looks like someone's bad designs for a 1970s sitcom.

AA is insolvent and has applied for protection under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code.

But the theory appears to be that, if its assets can be bought out of insolvency and its debts left behind, AA is, in some form, salvageable. But it hasn't made a profit for three years.

But AA is a force to be reckoned with: it is reported to be the world's fourth largest airline by passenger miles flown.

Dallas / Fort Worth is dependent on AA: an estimated 85% of the airport's business comes from AA flights.

AA bought the insolvent TWA in 2001 - about six months after two of its aircraft were hijacked on 11 September. The combination of the TWA take-over and the collapse in business weakened AA and it has struggled with the same crises as have sunk (in some cases temporarily, or seemingly so) almost every major US airline in the past decade. But, unlike those other airlines, AA had avoided insolvency procedures until late 2011.

But AA has irritated customers by adding a host of fees to ticket prices in the style of a low cost carrier while purporting to be - and charging like - a full service carrier. Most annoying appears to be the charging of a fee for even one piece of luggage to go in the hold. With ever-tighter restrictions on what can be carried in hand luggage, the charge becomes, for many passengers, a compulsory add-on.

But AA's attempts to tie up with British Airways and Iberia have been frustrated - but a limited authority has been granted by US regulators to integrate flight patterns more fully. A similar authorisation has been granted in respect of the also troubled Japan Air Lines - which as previously reported in these pages seems to be turning itself into a super-travel agency and much less an airline than previously.