Just the highlights:

• Bloomberg is reporting that US Airways is talking to American Airline creditors about buying American out of bankruptcy. This does not comes as a surprise; US Airways made a similar move to acquire Delta Air Lines when Delta was in Chapter 11.

• US Airway’s pilots union has elected new leadership. The UPoR spins this as being helpful in the advent of a US Airways/American Airlines merger, which it is. Even if there’s no merger, it’s important. In fact, reaching an agreement may well be a necessary though not sufficient condition if the airline is to add more than a handful of aircraft to US Airways proper. It certainly is a necessary condition to updating and possibly expanding the fleet of regional aircraft flown on US Airways’ behalf.

• Southwest Airlines is probably the country’s most admired airline. Just because it is well respected and consistently profitable doesn’t mean it does everything well. To put it bluntly, its IT operations are rather primitive and cannot currently support a codeshare arrangement between Southwest proper and AirTran Airways which Southwest bought about eight months ago. In fact, Southwest’s system won’t be able to support an AirTran codeshare until sometime next year(!). Which means that if you were hoping to catch an AirTran flight from Charlotte to Baltimore and then hop on a Southwest flight to, say, Buffalo, Hartford, or Providence, well, it’s not happening for a while yet. And yes, Southwest is leaving a lot of money on the table by not being able to offer AirTran to Southwest (or vice versa) connections.

• The latest Air Force force structure proposal has the N.C. Air Guard losing planes (see page 8). The NC ANG current has 10 C-130H transport planes; the proposal calls is for that to drop to 8 in FY 2017. The Air Force hasn’t calculated associated manpower reductions beyond its proposed FY 2013 cuts.

Overall, the proposal is rather odd. During the last BRAC round, the USAF talked about its desire for having larger reserve component units yet their proposed cuts go in the opposite direction. Some of the proposed moves also are just baffling. For example, the ANG C-130s currently at Ft. Worth, TX are suppose to move to Montana. This comes despite the aircraft’s current home at Carswell Field ranking 53rd overall with a military value of 50.57 in the airlift role in 2005 BRAC rankings compared to Great Fall, MT military value of 35.51 in the role, 124th overall. Gulf Coast area congressional delegations are concerned about the move and the Pentagon is reconsidering.

In any case, expect a BRAC round next year, Congress willing.

Update: The Street’s Ted Reed makes the case for US Airways/American Airlines merger.