A day after the news of the latest big merger, the WSJ’s Melanie Trottman reports here ($) that the merger of U.S. Airways and America West Airlines is having, ahem, might we say, “cultural problems”:

As executives try to figure out how to make the newly merged US Airways Group Inc. profitable, employees from both sides of the merger are squabbling over everything — from choosing uniforms to more weighty issues such as how to determine seniority for pilots and how to manage discounted free-flight privileges for workers.
Last month, violence erupted at a Philadelphia airport hotel between members and officials of unions vying to represent the fleet-service workers of the combined airline. According to the police, 25 members of the premerged US Airways’ fleet-service workers union showed up at an open meeting conducted by five organizers for the union that represents fleet-service workers at America West, telling them to leave. When they didn’t, the entrants started to fight and throw chairs at the five organizers, according to police.

Read the entire article. Inasmuch as US Airways has been in chapter 11 twice over the past several years and America West has also been through a chapter 11 reorganization in its past, the next chapter 11 reorganization of this merged airline would technically be a chapter 44 (4 X 11) case, which I believe would be a record for even the notoriously reorganization-prone airline industry.