The talks between US Airways and United have ended for now without reaching an agreement for the two airlines to merger. Where does that leave US Airways in general and Charlotte in particular? Glad you asked.

US Airways is in the same situation as everyone else in the airline industry at the moment: the cost of fuel is slowly killing them. Basic supply and demand says the only way to get the industry back to somewhat stable is to reduce the amount of seats available and increase fares. And not just by a little bit. Think double-digit percentages of both fare increases and available seat mile decreases.

If fuel prices stay high, eventually (think next year) big airlines are going to start running out of money. Aside from the gorilla of the industry (Southwest), no U.S. airline has an overwhelmingly strong balance sheet — most of the industry’s debt is already rated as junk.

There is a common view among financial analysts is that airline mergers are a good thing. But why exactly? What’s the financial justification for such consolidation? The possible rationales, stripped to their core:

1. Mergers are good as they create bigger airlines, which have lower average cost. This is essentially a minimum efficient scale argument. It’s true to a point, but an airline like US Airways is itself already very much over the step part of the curve to the degree it exists. And it doesn’t apply to many core airline costs, like fuel and flight crews.

2. Mergers are good as they create stronger brands.

3. Mergers are good as it offers a means to reduce competition. Merging airline over time can get rid of overlapping assets (hubs, gates, planes plus the associated the employees). They end up carrying fewer passengers but at a substantially higher fare with the combined airline making more money than the two carriers did separately.

So what does US Airways have to offer in a merger?

• CLT is the only viable hubsite in the Southeast besides Atlanta. It’s also an inexpensive facility to operate from, has tremendous capacity and can be — is being — expanded. The downside is that Charlotte, though growing, is only a mid-sized market.

• US Airways’ main transatlantic hub is in Philadelphia. Philly is a big market indeed, but it’s also a real mess of a place to operate from.

• A hub in Phoenix, which is a rapidly growing city. That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s also Southwest Airline’s biggest station.

• Some valuable slots in New York and Washington, D.C.

So yes, some good stuff. The question is whether the financial markets assign value to those assets – or whether we’ll see a desire to simply get capacity out of the system in any means possible. If the view on the Street is that a U.S. airline system with one Southeast hub is acceptable, or even a very good thing, then Charlotte’s in big trouble if fuel prices don’t moderate soon.