How do you know when an airline merger is official?

When someone you know who works at Continental Airlines sends you an email and his email address has suddenly changed to John Smith@united.com.

Yep. The deal is done. Today United and Continental officially became one entity, the largest airline in the world, with both airlines operating under the umbrella of parent United Continental Holdings, Inc. Shares of the new company also began trading this morning under United’s old ticker on the NYSE, UAL.

(I for one am very glad to see the airline stop trading on the Nasdaq exchange under that annoying UAUA ticker.)

Which reminds me. I need to go in and reconfigure our airline stock ticker widget over there to the right.

Pardon me while I go try to remember how to do this.