Don’t forget to thank Robin Hayes
 

Not only did he leave JetBlue in a far worse position, he managed to engineer the failure of Spirit as well. He may be responsible for taking down two airlines.

When every arm of the government that has influence over mergers is telling you “NO”, you listen. This is especially true when you’re already being sued by the DOJ for the last dumb idea you tried to pull off (NE alliance) under the wrong administration.

Instead Hayes torpedos a merger agreement with Frontier that was widely believed to have promise. He only needs to appeal to the greedy Spirit shareholders and start a proxy war.

The results are half in. Spirit is gone and JetBlue is considered next-up for chapter 11 as they burn through $3.5M daily.

Let Airbus know they’re North American CEO is a turd.

I agree with the idea that so many synergies were likely to be gained with Bill Franki's merger with Spirit. I remember at the time this looked like a formidable ULCC entity that would have had scale that the US market had never seen. Then comes along Robin Hayes, interjecting a largely unwanted offer that the Spirit leadership had largely no interest in; in fact, one of the most powerful pieces of evidence in the antistrust trial were the Spirit board members communimcations that they were against a Jetblue Merger because it was not likely to be approved by the DOJ Antitrust division so it wasn't even a viable option. But he went to the Shareholders and who knows maybe their greed got the better of them. Well, now Spirit is gone, JetBlue is in a spiral as well and paid a substantial price for the failure of the merger attempt, and Frontier may be ironically enough the healthiest one left. This should be an MBA case study at any quality school for decades.....

JB’s decision to put up an astronomically high, unsolicited offer while F9/NK were working through what would have likely been a successful merger, and NK’s decision to chase those mythical dollars will be remembered as one of the most destructive unforced errors in the history of this industry, in my opinion.

Not enough attention is being given to that disastrous series of decisions.

NK’s management wanted the F9 deal. Shareholders wanted the mythical B6 cash and didn’t listen.

I’m a B6 guy. And this is the best take yet. I flew with a captain couple months ago and she said her son was in business class and they are using JetBlue & Hayes as a case study on what NOT to do. It’s astonishing how he destroyed 2 airlines so quickly. It’s like he almost tried to do do this unlike Ichan or Lorenzo, no one made a penny. I’m embarrassed to wear this uniform. We’ve managed to **** off Frontier & AA, destroy Spirit, and then feed the wolf by letting United back in JFK. I’ll see you guys at the job fairs. Good luck

NK pilots & other work groups were also extremely vocal in favoring the JB deal. I’m not sure how much that internal pressure influenced the final decision, but NK employees were loud about it, and ultimately very wrong.

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy.

Honorable mention to the bankers who kept lending Robin Hayes the money he needed to keep raising $1,000 at a 5 dollar table, when it was clear that there was no plan, just a panic attack.

emphasis on this point. Many were absolutely in favor of the JB offer. Many owned stock hoping it would materialize

This is a bad take. Hayes made the move for the same reason Alaska overpaid for VA. Self preservation. A bigger, strong Frontier would have infiltrated JB's hubs in MCO and FLL, making it much more difficult to exist with significantly lower rates in many of JB's routes.

Yes JB made a larger offer than what NK was worth; as did Alaska for VA. That's not what killed this all. Had Biden's DOJ and DOT stayed out of it, the merger would have gone through.

Now, you couldn't see the engine issues that ultimately would have had JB filing for CH 11 as well, but the product would have been much more sustainable than Spirit. The ULCC model only works at a small scale. Once you grow to levels where costs rise exponentially, the margins and profitability become unsustainable.

While this is certainly true, they made the offer knowing who was in charge, knowing the political agendas of those individuals, and almost assuredly knowing the outcome.

That is remarkably poor decision making from the brass of both companies, in my opinion.

Yet he lost his job within a week or two after the failure of that plan....remind me again why TC got another year, and another bonus?

They may have known who was in charge, but I don't think they realized just how far the Biden administration would go to interfere with free market capitalism. Hard lesson to learn.

a lot of us were against the JB deal and nobody gives a rats ass what Labor wants. It was Greed that destroyed NK. Everyone slams Ted and he definitely made mistakes but he wasn’t wrong, should have voted in favor of F9. In the end the shareholders got what they deserved, nothing

This was Robin Hayes plan all along. Cost them $500 million but helluva lot cheaper than the merger.......

I'm not convinced even that would have gone through. B6 was eliminating a low cost competitor to raise fares, F9 would have been monopolizing the market of low fare airlines in order to raise fares. When there is a zealous no merger mindset, then any argument could be made in court to block under 1890's legislation.

maybe but there wouldn't have been the "leaked" memo from JB or Ted Christie on TV saying the merger would not be approved. It had a lot better of a shot than JB

Had the DOJ ignored anti-trust laws, the merger would have gone through. I guess that’s what you mean.

lol, you have to be kidding. You don't think allowing Allegiant/SunCountry and HAL & AK "harms " passengers.

Once the government files the lawsuit it is almost always going to be blocked. The DOJ has a pretty impressive success record. By your definition of anti-trust laws every airline merger in history would have been blocked. We both know the Trump DOJ would have never brought this lawsuit.

The laws are poorly written, often to the effect of "if any single consumer has to pay an extra nickel even once". Kind of like environmental laws that block major developments because some biology doctoral candidate decided some bug on the site is a distinct species from the billions of other virtually identical bugs in the area.

In many cases the judges are making calls that they don't want to make, but are bound by the letter of the law. At that point as a jurist your options are...

1. Judicial activism, start waving your wand and legislating from the bench (at least until you squashed by superior benches, or maybe arrested).

2. Uphold a bad law as written, and hopefully in the process send a message to the legislature that they have some more homework to do.

Make no mistake, Lina and Joseph wanted to block AS/HA, REAL bad, to satisfy their activist itch. Nevermind that HA would fail and the islands would be infested with SWA and local jobs displaced by mainland crews. They just got told to stand down due to pre-election political optics.

To their credit, AS managers played the timing exquisitely, and made all the right noises to leverage the political situation. Maybe they just stumbled into it, but given how many landmines they navigated I tend to give them the BOD.

Not wanting to turn this thread political, but it went much further than the DOJ. An entire side of the political aisle were publicly lobbying to stop the merger, celebrated when the government sued, and threw a party when it was blocked.

Employee sentiment had nothing to do with JetBlue. It was an unsolicited offer than had to go to a shareholder vote. A few pilots here and there with a collective insignificant amount of shares had zero influence. The .10 per share monthly dividend for fast money is what the hedgefunders and their millions of votes were after, and Robin Hayes knew it.

Better would have been the current administration's attempt to own 90% of an airline. That's some real Thomas Sowell conservative free market stuff.

Laughably drastic understatement for the amount of the NK seniority list, including some members of union leadership, pushing for the B6 merger over F9.

Ignorant post. Do better, or at least educate yourself before posting next time.

That was never going to happen, and didn't.

110 million shares 45% owned by institutions, roughly 55% was retail. Only 50% of available shares had a vote attached, and you can be sure most of those were from institutional investors. Sentiment of the pilots and union meant nothing. The institutions were going to get the outcome they wanted.

I remember being on a NK jump seat and they told me how happy they were they turned down our offer. I didn’t say anything but I was sad it didn’t go through. Lots of friends at NK and thought we’d do great things together. :(