Maybe American Airlines hasn’t decided who to merge with, registers Delta and United domains — OK, so
AMR to merge with U.S. Airways, United, or Delta?
Sunday evening I posted regarding how American Airlines or U.S. Airways registered a bunch of domain names related to a merger with U.S. Airways.
Today I have clarity that the firm doing the registering is American Airlines. [Update: Apparently U.S. Airways claims responsibility. I find this interesting given that some of the domains are specific to American, and some of them don’t even if the U.S. Airways brand in them, e.g. AAdvantageofUs.] But now we’ve lost the clarity on if American is merging with U.S. Airways or someone else.
Yesterday a firm, through MarkMonitor affiliate DNStinations, registered these additional domains:
american-deltaairlines.com, .net, and .org
american-unitedairlines.org
americanairlinesdelta.org
americandeltaairlines.org
americanunitedairlines.org
deltaairlines-american.org
deltaairlinesamerican.org
deltaairlinesamericanairlines.org
deltaandaa.org
unitedairlines-american.org
unitedairlinesamerican.org
unitedamericanairlines.org
unitedandaa.org
Given that the common firm between all of the domains is American, it’s a good bet that AMR is the registrant despite using MarkMonitor’s version of whois privacy. [See update above]
So here’s the bigger question: why did AMR (or U.S. Airways) register all of the US Airways domains last Friday, and then not get around to protecting other combinations such as with United and Delta until Monday?
There are three four possibilities.
First, U.S. Airways is the most likely merger partner but the firm realized it ought to protect the others just in case.
Second, U.S. Airways is who the firm plans to merge with but American wanted to throw up a smokescreen following news of the original domains got out.
Third, someone at MarkMonitor dropped the ball Friday and didn’t get around to registering the fresh domains until yesterday.
Fourth (added), U.S. Airways registered the domains Friday (which I still find intriguing if the merger is just at discussion point given some of the names registered only having American Brands in them) and then American realized on Monday that it ought to protect some other possibilities.
