They were highly profitable prior to 2019 and were seeing the writing on the wall prior to that with diminishing margins. That wasn’t a surprise as they had been planning and discussing merging with frontier since 2016 I believe, JetBlue was also running scenarios long before about an acquisition after their failure to acquire virgin. All of this was happening, so they weren’t blind. as to why it didn’t happen earlier I’m not sure but COVID came about and most analysts expected ULCC’s to be the successors of COVID. All of this happened and in early 2022 the fiasco of bidding war between B6 and Frontier is happening around similar time that it started becoming more obvious that ULCC’s were not going to be the winners of Covid, but in fact the losers. B6 wins and then the DOJ delays for 1.5 years the merger only to have it blocked. I would say management did a poor job, but all of the lead up with merger fiasco was the board’s decision, management was just following orders. Sitting in limbo for almost 2 years during a huge pivotal point is not an easy task for any airline. **** happens and it is what it is.