Loren Steffy, who used to cover airlines for Bloomberg, is now a business columnist with the Houston Chronicle.

Loren takes a swipe at the ongoing merger mania in the airline sector in his column this week in which a well-known airline CEO whines to Santa about what he wants and why he thinks he has to have it.

Nice job Loren.

Although done in jest, his column brings up a good point. If you are an airline CEO right now — just what do you do? Sit on the sidelines or jump into the shark-infested merger pool? If you don’t consider a merger, you may be odd man left out. But if you do, then what?

There’s no easy answer. But it’s certainly the reason the next six months in this industry are going to be some of the most interesting in recent history.