Originally Posted by
benzoate
Lets be honest, a corrupt DOJ dictated spirit. In what decision that you have read did a judge state for the record(im paraphrasing) "to the loyal spirit customers this ones for you". As far as pursuing anyone its hard to say we are or are not. In my 20+ years at B6 I have been told by Barger he spoke with AA. Ive heard UAL offered and Jetblue said NO. We heard about the proposed Virgin merger at the end. We heard about UAL/Continental and DAL/NW because they made it public. SWA and AT was 9 months in the making before we heard anything.
I would guess we are regularly in talks with other carriers. My fear is the arrogance and greed of Jetblue management. Their desire to remain in charge will supersede any salient decision to merge with another carrier.
I can almost assure you that AS BOD/management will not sell the airline or subjugate themselves to another... they've had an oportunity or two to do that in recent history and declined, they turned down DL FFS and may have also turned down UA. The new (seemingly competent) management team is young, and rooted in SEA. BOD members also tend to have relevant local geographic roots (PNW, Alaska, and now HI).
For B6 to acquire AS as things stand today would necessitate B6 coming from a position of amazing strength, ie a hostile takeover.