Originally Posted by
Boomer
Bgood has found a Bingo here. Of course Robin and Giggity say the NEA is just as important as acquiring NK. You don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.
But the tone of the Exec memos and pocket sessions is one-sided. The NEA helped us survive COVID. Merging with Spirit is how we will survive the next five years.
The NEA served a purpose, and now it’s cramping our ability to set our own density. It’s clear they think the Spirit deal is the way forward, with or without the NEA.
I don’t disagree with most of what you said, but the NEA plans existed long before covid (Nov 2019). It wasn’t a covid survival tool, it was a northeast growth tool (more slots from AA that were otherwise unavailable), then they used covid survival/recovery as the selling point to seek both ALPA scope concessions as well as selling points to the DOT/DOJ for easier approval. It has seemingly flopped (B6 is/was still losing money while everyone else was making money, and B6 was on the hook to pay AA $200m from their JV portion, but negotiated it down with AA to $25m since they were still losing money last quarter (I wonder what they gave up in those negotiations?)). So, I don’t think B6 really cares if it gets dissolved at this point, especially if they don’t have to pay the early exit fee (~$750 mil iirc, prorated). They still get some LGA slots from NK and can deal with/grow the combined B6/NK existing LGA/JFK/EWR/BOS footprint as able. That’s just my take though.