Ed was pretty clear in what he saw coming. Business in the LCC/ULCC do not make financial sense anymore. He predicts there to be M&A in that area.

JBU, F9, and NK will get gobbled up. I think that’s what’s going to happen.

allows everyone to bring fares up and right size domestic capacity.

I don’t see how having AL and AA merge make sense and benefit the consumer.

I think the case will be made that those ULCC/LCC businesses are bound to fail and we will come and save them and have some type of olive branch to guarantee fares stay low. Obviously fares will go up, but hey the superpac Airlines for America usually get what they want in the end of the day…

idk, I just don’t see this playing out where JetBlue gets bought and the rest of the low cost carriers don’t get absorbed just like Ed said happened in 09/10/11.

no one knows, but it seems like the big boys are projecting what they want to happen in this industry.

from Ed on the earnings call

“You have a considerable portion of the industry that has not returned its cost of capital, has not made a profit in years. Going back over the last decade when we saw consolidation happen, we forget what drove consolidation. What drove consolidation was higher fuel prices back in 2009, 2010, 2011, and we were the leaders in that with the acquisition of Northwest in 2008.”

“I anticipate higher fuel prices will cause much more significant structural reform than we’ve seen over this period. COVID, I think, was a different animal, where no one was strong enough to engage in the type of rationalization that was necessary.”

“As we look forward to building a healthier business for the future, there’s a number of business models that I think their owners are going to start questioning whether they continue to commit capital to. However that plays out, it’s going to be of benefit to Delta.”