Originally Posted by
Roy Biggins
Why not just strip it of all its assets and then sell it. I thought this guy wasn't allowed near airlines after TWA? Nobody has answered that question.
He is allowed to buy airlines. You're thinking of Frank Lorenzo who was barred by the DOT from being involved in the US airline business.
Originally Posted by
DrSmacFum
he can't force his way into a seat by buying shares can he?
Yes, he pretty much can. If you control a significant amount of voting shares you could put forth a shareholder proposal at the annual meeting to put Carl Icahn on the JB BOD. He has 34m shares and they would all vote in favor of that proposal. Even though Blackrock and Vanguard hold a lot of shares they usually dont vote in stuff like that. I own JBLU shares and have never voted in an annual meeting either.
Originally Posted by
gottagetout
Wouldn’t it be better if JetBlue was just sold to another airline with the business intact?
Yes, assuming that JB was profitable and we had a different DOJ. I think Icahn's Plan A will be to shrink JB to profitability (or attempt to) and then sell us in a whole to either UA/AA/WN/AS after we get a new DOJ.
Plan B would be shrink us to profitability, and if we cant turn a profit and/or we dont get a new DOJ start parting out the airline. Sell BOS gates to WN, 20 JFK gates/slots to UA, 80 gates/slots to AA, the remaining to WN. Sell majority of FLL gates to UA and/or WN, sell MCO gates to F9 or UA. Sell newish A321 airframes to DL/UA, sell A220s to DL. This leaves JB with a roughly 100 A320 classics and a token number of gates in the NE/Florida at which point we announce a rebrand to become a single fleet ULCC and are either bought by some ULCC like Avelo/Frontier/Spirit or we declare BK and restructure to lower costs even further to be competitive as a ULCC on our own.
Hopefully this is all overly pessimistic and he enacts change to get us on a profitable path as a standalone and we grow in the future.