Legendary investor David Bonderman owned significant stakes in Continental Airlines and America West. He’s passed away, and former American Airlines CEO Doug Parker offered remembrances co-hosting this week’s Airlines Confidential podcast.

Parker offered that when he was acquiring US Airways as CEO of America West in 2005, David Bonderman no longer had a financial interest in the Arizona-based airline. However he called Parker three or four times, and urged him to name the combined airline America West rather than US Airways. And Parker concedes Bonderman was right.

• US Airways was the larger, more national airline with a more prominent brand as part of Star Alliance.

• It seemed obvious that US Airways would be the surviving brand, but Bonderman counseled against it. US Airways had a toxic culture, and rebranding as America West would give them a fresh start.

When we did the America West – US Airways merger.. he called me.. three or four times telling me that we should name the combined company America West Airlines not US Airways. N one else said that. None of our advisors, none of our marketing team said that was a good idea. I didn’t think that was a good idea.

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Parker thought America West sounded regional, while US Airways “sounded like an airline that flew around the United States.” And he noted that US Airways was twice as big so they’d “have to paint twice as many planes.”

That may be the most Doug Parker reason ever to keep the US Airways name. When he took over American Airlines, he let employees vote on whether to keep the new American livery or revert to the old one, he said, because the decision didn’t matter. But since he wanted to save money, they were only going to get to vote on the tail.

Bonderman thought that US Airways, after two bankruptcies, furloughs, and various strategies and CEOs, “had this attitude.” And Parker said, “David was right” and that “if we’d have called it America West Airlines we wouldn’t have had that issue at least” that it would have been easier to change the culture.

In fact, America West management actually never managed to complete the merger with US Airways until after doing the 2013 merger with American. They ran separate airlines “US East” and “US West.” Their pilots even created a new union focused on damaging legacy America West pilots rather than negotiating aggressively against the company.

American Airlines is sometimes derided as “America West dba American Airlines,” since America West-run US Airways took over that larger carrier too and ran it, some say, as a regional low cost airline. I’ve written “you can take management out of Tempe, but you can’t take Tempe out of management.”