(FORTUNE Magazine) – ''This is your captain speaking,'' announces the pilot on Continental Flight 166 leaving San Francisco. ''As usual, thanks folks, for your votes making us tops in customer satisfaction.'' Meanwhile, a passenger on the East Coast shuttle tips back his brass-and-purple plush seat to watch The Fight beamed up from Atlantic City on the in-flight screen. Could this ever happen? That's what the bosses of the two airlines almost seem to be promising. Rosy futures were the theme after back-to-back press conferences at which the increasingly embattled Frank Lorenzo, head of Texas Air, first announced a kind of marriage between his Continental subsidiary and Scandinavian Airlines System, and then, the next week, a divorce from Eastern's shuttle, which Donald Trump took off his hands for $365 million. Like most marriages, there will be lumps between SAS and Continental. Continental's gruesome reputation for service contrasts with SAS's, which is highly acclaimed. Troops from both airlines will attend seminars in the hope that Continental employees will pick up SAS ways. Shuttle flyers must be curious about their future aboard what Trump promises to be a flying ''diamond.'' Lorenzo's next move? Will he sell the rest of Eastern to Carl Icahn of TWA?