Originally Posted by
I was inverted
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.
I believe Jetblue really wants the slots at JFK and LGA. American can't make money flying them. The best case scenario for Jetblue is that the DOJ dumbs down the NEA to a simple codeshare but American lets Jetblue continue to fly the slots. No revenue sharing, no flight coordinating, no frequent flier mile sharing. There is a decent chance that American will do that just to keep the slots off the open market and still have a partner in JFK. Then with the Spirit merger we take down all their one off flying and fill back in at FLL, MCO, EWR, BOS.