This doesn’t particularly worry me in the short term. Both companies (Spirit and Frontier) have competed with UAL as independent companies prior to this merger being a thing. In the short term, there will be merger pain and inefficiencies. That being said, in the long term, when the new companies take delivery of their jets they will absolutely be a competitor in the market (as they would have been independently). However, by then UAL will be back established in the international game and business travel unless covid 22 comes out.

CASM isn’t everything. RASM-CASM=Income. Yes, F9 and NK both have really impressive CASM numbers but the fact of the matter is they also have low yields. Now, for the domestic market this may cause a bit of a shuffling effect but shouldn’t really impede United’s position in the international/business segment.

Another factor people forget about is that the open skies agreements in Europe allow lower cost of labor eastern European airlines (like Wizz Air) to compete with the higher labor cost western European airlines(like Air France) domestically. IMO that is the true reason for the failure of European legacies to compete. Here in the US we have an even playing field and labor is 50% of the cost of the airline. Imagine if all of a sudden any US carrier had to compete with Volaris domestically, the costs would be crazy different.