FAILURE: What Happened to the JetBlue and Spirit Airlines Merger?

Read my article on this topic here: aeroxplorer.com/articles/federal-judge-blocks-38b-…

Could we still see Spirit Airlines rebranding though, so it doesn’t get confused with Spirit Aerosystems?

It felt very beneficial if JetBlue inherited Spirit Airlines for a surplus of A320s, A321s, A320neos, A321neos, and the A319neo.

Great, so now Spirit and JetBlue will be at a huge disadvantage to the powerful might of the existing legacy carriers. Seems to me like the Justice Department was getting a kickback from legacy airlines hoping to prevent JetBlue from getting bigger.

Wanted this to happen, Would have been more competition in passenger service-fares sector, But idk what they think

I do think if jetBlue were to win and take over Spirit that it'll have a similar fate to Pan Am, with its hub ops split amongst other airlines (Imo, UAL or WN takes JFK and BOS, Breeze takes FLL and MCO, Avelo moves into LAX, Allegiant takes LGA, and maybe Delta or American starts a EWR base, or a LCC I haven't mentioned takes the EWR base, while for Spirit's hubs, probably liquidated to any airline that wants the landing slots, as for planes, probably retired or liquidated to international buyers) I do think even though Spirit has to find another way to make a profit, this strike down secretly saved B6 from potentially a Pan Am style downfall. Maybe jetBlue can just scrap expanding west and could just became the Alaska of the East Coast, idk this could be my thoughts on what if the merger proceeded, but who knows

They should’ve looked at acquiring Breeze or Hawaiian (before AS took that opportunity) instead of Spirit

The reason the merger got nixed has more to do with definitions. JetBlue definition of a market was all airlines, flying in a specific market either directly or indirectly. The judge ruled that the broader definition of the market would not be allowed, the biggest effect of this is it limited the effects of comparing high cost and low cost airport in the same market. Instead the only things they could consider in lowering prices where only spirit flies currently, places where JetBlue and spirit fly directly, and locations where spirit and JetBlue fly indirectly. For example: a JetBlue spirit merger “could” lower prices in the Miami Fort Lauderdale market, by forcing American Airlines to lower its prices in Miami, but that would be an invalid comparison for the purposes of the antitrust, according to the judge, because they could only compare prices from Fort Lauderdale we’re prices would probably go up and where JetBlue and spirit both have focus cities.

Under the viewpoint, the judge use in this antitrust case the Alaskan and Hawaiian merger will go through because of the lack of overlapping roots. However if you apply JetBlue’s view of a market the alaskan Hawaiian murder would probably fail.😂 The market, concentration of Alaskan and Hawaiian airlines would create a really Concentrated competitor that would be able to pass along significant price increases.

Nice video

It’s really simple as to what happened: JetBlue wanted more planes without having to wait for Airbus to build them. This would have doubled the size of their fleet on the cheap. Neelman (The JetBlue founder), created Breeze to hopefully fill in the gap that Spirit would leave in the US aviation market could convince US regulators that there wasn’t a monopoly. Alas, their arguments were weak

It was a bad move from the beginning. Alaska or Hawaiian would have been a better partner for Jet Blue. Look at the mess, now that Alaska has very little choice but to take Hawaiian. I hope AS gets the merger done and expands into Asia. I would totally do a connecting flight via Honolulu or Anchorage to Asia.

I feel like this could have ripple effects on alaska airline’s planned merger with Hawaiian Airlines

Merger being blocked is such a missed opportunity to improve spirit airlines and make them an airline that people might actually want to fly on.

Alaska should have bid for JetBlue instead of Hawaiian which was an odd choice anyway. Frontier and Spirit should merge. United should bid for JetBlue. They would own the NYC area market and it would be non-competitive because their EWR hub is in a different state altogether, therefore eliminating any competition.

Spirit should have taken Frontiers offer