Originally Posted by
Lobaeux
He only thing that would be useful from Frontier, would be the actual aircraft (admittedly, I don't know if they're wholly owned or leased) and the exposure to the Western US. No reason why Spirit couldn't gain these without Frontier though.
Why did SWA buy AirTran? To gain entrance to ATL, only to downgrade that hub to a focus city status as is the case with SWA cities? To take in a separate fleet type (717) only so they could lease them all out to Delta? Just the addition of a few dozen 737s? Or is it that they wanted to take one more competitor out?
Mark my words, now that the legacy carriers have all merged down to just 3 (AA/DL/UA), the next consolidation will be at the LCC level. Between Virgin, JetBlue, Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant. You will see two of these hook up in a merger. This won't be done for any other reason than necessity to better compete with the legacies.