Shout out to David Slotnick. Guy is doing a great job.

 

I agree. He's doing a solid job

 

After today’s court hearings it seems DOJ has a very weak case. Great job by B6 lawyers and CEO.

 

Here is Day 2 of the Merger Trial for who's interested.


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

 

It will be interesting to see where everything stands by the end of this week.

 

The DOJ's arguments have not been amended since before the NEA was cancelled. Their case is very narrow between the NEA being gone and the many divestitures B6 has already agreed to with other ULCC's. So what the entire case comes down to the DOJ's hope that the judge will side with them on the very narrow definition of the Clayton Act. The govt is arguing that the judge should focus on the markets where a B6/NK merger would hurt competition. B6 arguing that the judge should consider the country as a whole. Basically as a non-lawyer, the governments argument is a long shot, but I'm bias.

What I think B6 is doing a good job of is pointing out the hypocrisy of allowing the big 4 airlines to essentially dominate air service in the US for the foreseeable future. Whatever Spirit said before they agreed to merging with B6, their actions said otherwise. We have been slowly shrinking our presence in the markets (DFW, ORD, DTW) where we can't compete with the big guys. So while they argued in public that ULCC was such a great business model, not being able to scale our operation has kept us down to the point now that we can't even turn a profit, engine issues aside. Spirit can't demand a higher ticket price because people generally don't prefer to fly on us. We have a good product mostly, but our reputation has been beat down over years of late night talk show host and meltdowns.

What's even worse, while we have aircraft or order, so do the big 4. They have placed insane orders not only to replace older aircraft, but to grow their fleets further locking up the ability to obtain manufacturing slots in the near future. The DOJ is out of line on this.

 

These are great, thank you!

 

How is this at all a full day? Let’s get on with it. 8:30-5:00 is a work day! What’s with this country club schedule?!

 

Dude, the judge is like a million years old, give him a break. I don't want to work that much and he's got many decades on me. Can't wait for DTZ!

 

David posted he was sick today so no blow by blow of what happened in the trial but someone posted this under his 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."