I don’t see it that way, but it’s hard to predict the future. I think the DOJ will be emboldened by this recent decision and will put on a full court press trying to prove to the judge that B6/NK is harmful to consumers, just like they were able to show with the NEA. No NEA or merger….where does that leave JetBlue is the million dollar question.

 

The NEA was a completely different animal than B6 + NK. It was essentially geographically-defined virtual merger between an LCC and a legacy. There wasn’t much case law to support two companies being able to coordinate operations like that wo going through the established antitrust/M&A process.

B6+NK is a conventional full-on merger. There is a large corpus of administrative/statutory/case law history governing the pathway to approval. The DOJ can’t just block it on a whim, they have to support their claim that it will hurt competition, which I expect will be an uphill battle given that B6 + NK combined will still be way smaller than any of the big 4. We also have plenty of data showing that B6 has a larger impact on price vs. NK, because we compete directly w/the legacies on price and product, over the same finite pool of consumers

I’m confident at the end of the day, the politicians will posture, we’ll divest a few gates and slots here and there, and we’ll get through it.

 

Exactly, there is zero precedent in the NEA and the judge was left with only deciding based on anti-trust law and in this specific case he ruled pretty much the only way he could with what was before him. The merger has a ton of precedent that the court will need to balance as well as anti-trust laws.

 

NEA-Obama appointed judge
Merger-Reagan appointed judge.

Sometimes I think it’s that simple. Ol boy just needs to keep above ground until November.

 

Due to this tragedy the company is now being forced to cut our profit sharing checks by 90%.

Thanks Biden....

 

does this mean I’m going to owe money to JetBlue???😭😅😂

 

And since profit sharing didn’t even make the top 5 in the ALPA survey last year, the pilot group doesn’t really care either.

as another said, this was a “merger without a merger”. JB was never going to win this lawsuit.

 

There’s a reason profit sharing didn’t make it in the top 5. It’s because it wasn’t educated by the NC/MEC properly (by design). I suspect PS will be fought for a little harder, educated a bit better in things like contract comparison guides and negotiation info that is put out, especially since it seems to be an industry standard thing now.

 

That's a Bingo. But it's sad, and moronical, that our peers don't want an industry standard contract (or better), including all the standard components an airline pilot at our level of the industry enjoy.

 

Hot take, I really don't care about having more money. More money cannot buy more time with the people I care about.
I want more days at home, better health care for my family, and a reworked reserve grid/ drop-swap system (so I can spend more of my life not at work).

I'm not saying these should be your priorities; but plenty of people have different priorities than profit sharing.

JB has pretty solid work rules by and large, and I hope we continue to improve them. Particularly around pairing construction and fatigue there are a lot of improvements to be made, but more money spent on us won't fix that. Perhaps more money spent on soft time would.