Continental-United is off; United-US Airways next?

After weeks of wooing and courting and humming Mariah Carey tunes, United has been rebuffed by Continental, which decided it was all over after United reported worse-than-expected earnings.
Still this will likely prove only a minor setback in the urge to merge sweeping the struggling industry. Continental is now expected to try to cut some kind of alliance deal with American and British Airways.
And the airline wise guys say spurned suitor United -- which is tough shape and hungering for a deal -- will now go full-out at US Airways, which it has already chatted up.
So, now it's time to once again play The What-If game.
If United and US Airways were hook up, there could be some interesting fallout at Logan. To begin with a combined carrier would serve about a quarter of the passengers here -- US Airways does about 16 percent of the traffic and United nearly 9 percent.
In the short term there might not be much change in fares overall as the only route overlap is the D.C. market -- United flies to its hubs in Washington, Chicago, Denver, LA and San Francisco, and US Airways goes to Washington, the Caribbean, New York, Philly, Pittsburgh, and Las Vegas and Phoenix.
It's a bit early to even guess what Continental-AA-BA alliance might look like.
Stay tuned.