Originally Posted by
threeighteen
How did it not work out the last two times?
OO's acquisition of two competitors eliminated two of their larger barriers to growth and gave themselves the ability to whip-saw employee groups instead of getting whipsawed. They also gutted both of those carriers of anything and everything they had that was lucrative, "merged" them together, and then packaged up the now undesirable scraps with some of their debt, and sold it to United in exchange for $100 million + contracts for more E175s.
Now United is stuck with a debt payment and an airline they couldn't even get rid of for free if they tried to.
If OO finds another opportunity to gain significant market share in 3-4 years by buying a carrier for pennies on the dollar today, they might just do it.
From my perspective, that wasn't exactly the plan. Trust me SGU was never for a minute happy with how any of that turned out. They do not want a merger with a union carrier (esp ALPA). They do not want a common-carrier petition either, which means they have to keep an acquired regional at arms length with it's own HQ and overhead... defeats the economy of scale.
If they want more capacity, they'll grow it, just like they've done countless times in the past. They can afford to buy planes (especially now, just go out to the desert and pick out the ones you like). If they opened a hiring window tonight, they'd have 1,000 applicants in 24 hours.
If they buy another regional it will be in small pieces at the fire sale.