In the courtroom.
 

In the Boston courtroom right now journalists have capture last minute negotiations to stop the lawsuit from going to trial. I got to admit it was pretty wild to watch. I don’t think the DOJ has very good attorneys.

https://youtu.be/Euiz5hR3LoU?si=fbrb1BW4ggT9tNne

Anyway

Here is how the first day went in court today for whoever is interested. David, from The Points Guy, gave the narrative and he will be back in court tomorrow to continue feeding info to his twitter page.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...ymACErgsNTsUG0

hope they don’t go back and read this thread from 2015!
https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/m...t-jetblue.html

Or you could not bump and link this stuff. How about that.

If the DOJ starts hunting around on APC then their argument is REALLY screwed

Why, because Spirit thought something different was true 8 YEARS ago, according to some pilots?

Here's Day 2 of the Merger Trial


https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...UcK8P_AUuynYZg

DOJ: "Look your honor, Look. A random pilot was on APC talking about Spirit's growth in 2015. So you see, they can do it on their own. If they did it back then, they sure as hell can do it now. They are Liars!"

:D having a little fun.

seems funny but spirit management did exactly that to get a restraining order from a judge against the pilots once upon a time.

this is true.

Yeah but that happened in the time the person was doing that. Now we're talking about a random msg 8 years ago. Spirit isn't even close to the same it was in 2015, as do any other Airline. It would be a complete joke in court.

Just read some of the transcripts/articles. Wow is all I can say. This is such a joke of a trial. Something screwy is going on behind the scenes, there's no other explanation why so many in government have it in for JB. Maybe we lost too many of their bags.

Few weeks ago Exxon bought Pioneer Natural (Shale/petroleum producer) for $59 billion. From a news article...

I don't see that being sent to court, yet somehow freaking Jetblue and Spirt is worthy of multiple government lawsuits because "competition". Give me a break. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Anyone have any other link of someone covering Day 3 Merger trial? David is sick so he won't be there.

imagine my disappointment when I sat down with coffee in hand ready to start hitting refresh over and over only to find that David’s sick. This is horrible ha!

Day ruined. I have been enjoying the blow by blow.

I'm really surprised that David has been our only outlet for unbiased up to date information on this case.

haha right?? Same here.

blow for the DOJ or for JetBlue/Spirit? I’m just curious because I’d have heard both sides “look bad”.

Eh so far they are really both saying different things as they have been the entire time. So far DOJs entire argument is "Look your honor, who cares about the industry as a whole and the big picture, if even one person doesn't have the ability to get on a flight paid for by a stimulus check, and if they do not have the ability to fist fight the gate agent then this whole merger should be shot down!"

And B6 is saying "Shhh pay no attention to the white claw drinkers who will be unable to get on a flight for 17$, look at the industry as a whole".

Essentially an apple to oranges argument. Most of the DOJs energy seemed to be spent on looking at the Spirit CEOS comments from the previous years so far. I would say B6 is winning, but its hard to say from a tweet summary lol.

To preface this, I am a dumb uneducated airbus driver who knows absolutely nothing about the law so please feel free to completely ignore me, or to tell me to shut up.

Unfortunately no play by play summary today, which I was really enjoying.

SHUT UP!

no reason - but you said someone could tell you so I thought I would jump on the opportunity. Haha

really tho - I agree - the tweets have been at least entertaining. Guess we all need to do a healing dance so David can feel better and return tomorrow.

Side note - a friend of mine and I were talking about David’s lack of presence in the quart room today due to being sick. My friend says, suspicious, doesn’t he have a T? Maybe the DOJ put him under house arrest so he couldn’t report on their silly points that they are making. 😂 let tue conspiracy theories begin.

If only he had gotten the 9th booster shot, then he could've been healthy.

Ted did I good job, I think, explaining the process and why he was “against the merger,” before being “for it,” without stating the obvious “I was getting paid more by Frontier at the time.”

The NEA helps his argument by saying “yes, I thought it was a hard battle for DOJ approval when there was still an NEA in play, that’s gone now”.

Ted’s a smooth talker, the summary didn’t seem like the DOJ really hit with the gotcha moment that ‘even Spirit was against the deal originally’ which they focused on in their complaint.

I think at this point it comes down to which side better lays out the financials and market impacts of the three possible scenarios: the airlines don’t merger, they merge and become a successful legacy competitor, or they merge and are ineffectual while leaving a gap in the ULCC market.

I was thinking JB told him to stay away because today they would roll out their 2027 combined network plan and potential focus city map. Can’t have that leaking to the plebs on Twitter.

Real journalists aren't allowed to report, but somehow a blogger is tweeting out a play by play blatantly under his own name?

My speculation - I doubt he'll be back. That's not conspiracy thinking at all. He broke the rules, got caught and got asked to leave. I'm surprised he did it for 2 days, tbh. That being said, I appreciated the fact that he did it, but we all can agree that it was against the rules.

Against the rules? B6 and NK wanted a closed court but the judge denied that and said it would be public. https://www.law360.com/articles/1737...ntitrust-trial

Rules vary considerably on tweeting a court case. Where did you see that it was against the rules to tweet it out?

Something is up... 3 people that I saw tweeting about the case the first 2 days are all not present today. The whole sick things seems fishy to me as well, and I wouldnt be surprised if this is it.

maybe they all ate the fish?

I would agree with your sentiment, except William McGee, who just so happens to be totally against this merger, or apparently, against any merger, is still in the court room also tweeting. However, he is not tweeting nearly as much as David was, and he is only tweeting things that lean towards the DOJS case. Now THATS sus!

Can we get a transcript of the court case? Or is this all just gone forever?

i dont think that nut has tweeted anything about whats going on in court today specifically.

Yes. Some of this is free, the transcripts and some other documents require you to have a Pacer account and pay for the documents.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket...ration/?page=1

I seriously doubt there's any restrictions on tweeting this case. Anyone can attend the trial.

Someone posted this under David post


"I went today, the biggest take away I got was the competition is the big 4. ULCC’s will fill the gap with the divestitures, which the judge possibly didn’t know about the signed LOA. Overlap is minimal on routes, which will help fill in the middle of the country."

If that's correct that the Judge was unaware of these divestitures, he likely be unhappy with DOJ. From reading the Judge's history, I don't think he'll like the DOJ wasting judicial time on this matter.

Yeah. Hopefully David is feeling better today.

we should all send him a get well card.

Well.....we are too late(in B6 fashion lol), he got well enough already. He'll be back in court today, probably in an hour.

Here is Day 4 Trial. He got there late today (at around 1135am).


https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...gM7z8aMZg3lMfA

Was anyone else surprised to hear that Robin had ridden on Spirit at least once? I suppose that's not a bad idea as the CEO of an airline to familiarize yourself with the competitor's product, but it was surprising to me nonetheless. That's strangely humanizes him to me I don't know why.