Originally Posted by
BKbigfish
I mean that’s a complicated question but the point is that one of the main functions of government is to protect the consumer from monopolistic forces in the market. I will say the last administration did at least attempt a fair amount of anti-trust enforcement it was just often incompetent in its choice of when and where to deploy said enforcement. Ultimately I think the reason NK filed the complaint is to highlight the hypocrisy of the uneven anti-trust enforcement and lay the groundwork for the justification of whatever merger or partnership they end up in down the road.
Government protecting consumers from predatory companies is much different than Government propping up weak businesses by making it harder for companies that are working to be successful. Here are some profit margins of companies in the US for comparison:
NVIDIA: 53.4%
Visa: 55%
Mastercard: 45%
Microsoft 37%
Meta 38%
Apple 26%
Alphabet 30%
Delta Airlines 5.6%
United Airlines 5.5%
United only has a 16% market share in the US for Domestic travel. Its ridiculous that a 16% market share company in any industry with a sub 6% profit margin is somehow exhibiting "monopolistic forces" just because most of its competitors are losing money. The Spirit complaint is ridiculous (15 pages and laughable) includes the phrase "the tooth fairy" and is mostly based on not what was proposed, but more of a conspiracy theory that behind the scenes there is coordination and money being exchanged etc. Its a joke and I can't see how the DOT would care or why Spirit management is even wasting time with this instead of trying to figure out how to recover from a 44% increase in CASM since 2019 while only have 1% more RASM over the same time frame.