One airline has painted some of its planes purple and turquoise, the colors of the Major League Baseball team it sponsors, or cardinal red, in honor of the pro football team it backs.
The other shuns any hint of glitz, with a fleet in subdued blue, white and gray.
One airline has its headquarters in an Arizona suburb known for its perpetual-sunshine-and-flip-flops lifestyle.
The other is based in a Washington suburb that is a center for government contractors and the home of a military cemetery.
But last week, younger, edgier America West of Tempe, Ariz., announced that it would merge with older, more conservative US Airways of Arlington in a $1.5 billion deal that would create one of the nation's largest low-cost airlines.
Employees and Wall Street analysts asked: Would this marriage of two cultures -- East and West, button-down and entrepreneurial -- really work?
Airline veterans say it will have to because neither US Airways Group Inc., which posted a $611 million loss last year, nor America West Holdings Corp., which was $89 million in the hole, has much of a choice.
"We may have some cultural differences," said John A. Taylor, a veteran US Airways pilot. "But we both want to survive. So we are looking forward to taking the best of both airlines and learning from each other."
One thing the two airlines share is a history of financial trouble deep enough to send them to bankruptcy court.
US Airways, the nation's seventh-largest airline, is fighting to emerge from its second Chapter 11 reorganization in three years. America West, the eighth-largest, operated under Chapter 11 protection from 1991 to 1994. Both carriers have tried to withstand the withering effects of soaring fuel prices, profit-draining airfare wars and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Under the merger deal, the combined airline would be called US Airways, but the company would have its headquarters in Tempe, a city of 160,000 that is a 10-minute drive from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The new US Airways would be headed by W. Douglas Parker, 43, America West's chief executive. US Airways chief executive Bruce R. Lakefield, 61, would be No. 2.
US Airways has more to gain from the merger, experts said, starting with some lessons it could learn from America West on customer service.
