Originally Posted by
nuball5
I don’t see it that way, but it’s hard to predict the future. I think the DOJ will be emboldened by this recent decision and will put on a full court press trying to prove to the judge that B6/NK is harmful to consumers, just like they were able to show with the NEA. No NEA or merger….where does that leave JetBlue is the million dollar question.
The NEA was a completely different animal than B6 + NK. It was essentially geographically-defined virtual merger between an LCC and a legacy. There wasn’t much case law to support two companies being able to coordinate operations like that wo going through the established antitrust/M&A process.
B6+NK is a conventional full-on merger. There is a large corpus of administrative/statutory/case law history governing the pathway to approval. The DOJ can’t just block it on a whim, they have to support their claim that it will hurt competition, which I expect will be an uphill battle given that B6 + NK combined will still be way smaller than any of the big 4. We also have plenty of data showing that B6 has a larger impact on price vs. NK, because we compete directly w/the legacies on price and product, over the same finite pool of consumers
I’m confident at the end of the day, the politicians will posture, we’ll divest a few gates and slots here and there, and we’ll get through it.