The "synergy" behind all of those airline mergers is coming home now with higher fuel prices. It's my opinion that even had fuel prices dropped, something very similar would have happened anyway: large mergers just don't work well:

The global airline industry will fly 60m fewer seats in the run-up to Christmas - equivalent to a 7% cut in flights - as high oil prices and the economic downturn force carriers to cut services.

Experts predict even deeper cuts in 2009 as part of a prolonged retrenchment of an industry that has expanded rapidly in recent years. Airlines will offer 59.7m fewer seats between October and December compared with the same period last year, according to flight information company OAG. Britain's biggest carriers have already confirmed significant capacity cuts, with Ryanair, easyJet and British Airways all reducing services.

This is a lot like what we saw in the train industry a century ago (consolidation and route reduction), and in the car industry starting about 50 years ago (consolidation and reduction). There have just been too many seats chasing too few passengers (even with the expansion in flying over the last few decades) to sustain as many airlines and planes as there have been.