The American Airlines merger that began in December 2013 became one step closer to completion on Wednesday, as US Airways goes the way of TWA and PanAm before it.
The Federal Aviation Administration now recognizes a single call sign for the American Airlines Group Inc., and US Airways' "Cactus" sign -- adopted by the airline in 2005 after merging with America West -- has been retired, replaced instead by "American."
“There are no light-switch type transitions for virtually anything but the call sign,” American's chief operating officer Robert Isom told Bloomberg. “The [single operating certificate] date is really a recognition that everything has come together.”
The last "Cactus" flight took place Wednesday morning, from London's Heathrow Airport to Philadelphia.
Now that the airline group has a single operating certificate, it can work on unifying the reservation systems, which is expected to happen by the fourth quarter.
However, travelers won't notice a big change Wednesday -- the brand name isn't going away quite yet. Trips can still be booked on the US Airways website.
On the business side, American will be able to save a significant amount of money on operations.
“Think of it as the ultimate enabler for integration,” Ed Bular, a senior vice-president in charge of obtaining the single operating certificate, told Dallas News. “The rest of the airline really cannot integrate until the airline officially becomes one.”
The last US Airways-branded planes will be converted to American's livery by 2017.