AMR Says March Trial Could Put US Airways Merger at Risk

AMR Corp. and US Airways Group Inc. said that waiting until March to start an antitrust trial as proposed by the Justice Department would cause “significant harm” and put their proposed merger at risk.

The government’s proposed trial schedule places the merger of bankrupt AMR’s American Airlines with Tempe, Arizona-based US Airways in jeopardy “because two independent companies can be asked to stay in limbo for only so long before they need to make independent plans,” lawyers for the airlines wrote in a filing yesterday in federal court in Washington.