Originally Posted by REF 5

So domestic yields have been horrible for quite a few quarters. Probably a couple of years. The largest domestic airline also has had horrible yields. Up to recently, the network carriers domestic yield's haven't been great either. Most of their high yields come from outside the US. Another words their is alot of ASM's chasing not many profitable RPM's. So you want an airline that had a 7% market share to merge with an airline that has a 16% market share. Which would do what? The largest overlap of Spirit was SWA. Just by the elimination of ASM's you get a better outcome on yields. So that is just the P&L side of things. Thats math. As far as the balance sheet, SWA has been spending lots of money buying back stock since the restriction was lifted due to the COVID money. I doubt senior management can ever sell the idea of buying Spirit to the BOD and more importantly the top 5 shareholders of SWA. One is very vocal. That transaction would certainly have to issue treasury stock which would dilute equity. After buying back $2.5 Billion in stockbuy back's, I doubt the BOD would even consider it. SWA's debt to EBITDAR would sky rocket. It would easily surpass the network carriers and ALK. The pillars of cashflows, balance sheet and the income statements would be stressed quite a bit. Wallstreet would not be happy. Bigger doesn't' necessarily mean better. AAL is very large airline yet their margins are not great. The quality of the network(ASM's, yields, market share in high yielding markets) is what matters. SWA is best to be on its own for now.