Yeah, the administration owns part of this mess, but let’s not pretend they’re the only ones at fault. Shareholders and JetBlue shoulder most of it. TC, for all his faults, went on multiple news shows saying the JetBlue deal probably wouldn’t make it past regulators and that Frontier was the smarter play. The market agreed, Spirit stock never got anywhere near JetBlue’s offer price because Wall Street knew the risk was high. Shareholders still chased the bigger number and ignored the odds. That’s greed, plain and simple. Would Sprontier be killing it today? Maybe, maybe not but they’d sure as hell be putting up more of a fight than they are flying solo.

Look at Alaska and Hawaiian. Totally different route structures and overlaps compared to Spirit JetBlue, but they got their deal approved under the exact same administration. If the DOJ was just “block everything,” they’d have killed that one too.

Not only that, the merger guidelines used to block Spirit JetBlue weren’t some new anti business invention. In fact the merger guidelines are one of the few things the current administration rolled over from the last administration, and most of it is just restating antitrust law that’s been around for over a century. That’s one big reason we’re not seeing the M&A boom everyone was calling for.

This is straight from the current DOJ:

"Ms. Slater elaborated on her rationale for continued use of the guidelines in her answer: [FTC] Chairman [Andrew] Ferguson has explained that the Merger Guidelines work best when there is stability across administrations... He further explained that much of what is in the current merger guidelines simply restates longstanding law"

https://www.justice.gov/atr/media/1389861/dl?inline

 

He might need to be in disguise

 

Truth. Most believe the Frontier Spirt Deal would have been approved and made sense. Am I mistaken but didn’t Frontier make an offer to buy/merge with Spirt again around the end of the Chapter 11 process? Wouldn’t it be better to merge with Frontier vs Chapter 7 which appears to me eminent? Hoping all the pilots have a soft landing somewhere. Hang in there.

 

Let’s stop blaming the judge. Spirit management told us the JetBlue deal would be problematic, but few listened.

Frontier made a second attempt at a merger, and they were turned away again.

I’m hoping the pilots and other Spirit employees come out successfully on the other side of this.

 

It's greed again, bond holders wanted more.... and took a gamble on this plan

 

Norfolk Southern Union Pacific??? We’re literally going from 4 rail operators to 3, and likely down to 2 later….

 

First, you have to assume that the new stakeholders want to entertain/fund Spirit recovery, which will take a little while, or have much interest in running an airline after recovery.

Most likely, at the time, they were thinking what they could get, by going to Chapter 7, was more than F9 was offering. These people don't really care about the interest of the employees. It's business to them. Only we would think about saving jobs. We are always the ones that will be served up on the plate.

 

How many pilots are on the list at spirit post furlough?

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/spir...kruptcy-2025-8

Looks like the end might be near 😢

 

Accident of history... runup to a crazy election and the local dems in HI advocated in favor of the merger (alternative being potential HAL BK and SWA takeover). Also the regime was on the electoral ropes and IMO didn't want to make any high profile anti-business / anti-economy moves on short final to the election.