Law360 focused on AAI’s analysis of the Spirit-Frontier merger is its latest reporting on airline mergers. The article Biden Antitrust Efforts May Trip Up JetBlue’s Spirit Bid discusses AAI’s work, as follows:
The American Antitrust Institute, which already raised concerns that the proposed Frontier-Spirit merger would eliminate competition, said a potential JetBlue-Spirit combination raises similar concerns.
“Higher concentration on city-pairs raises concerns about effects on fares, ancillary fees and service quality,” AAI President Diana L. Moss said. “Also, much like Spirit-Frontier, a Spirit-JetBlue merger would raise questions about benefits that could be squeezed from the merger. They have very different business models — Spirit is ‘ultra low fares’ and JetBlue is just ‘low fares’ — and combining them raises questions about what types of benefits they could legitimately claim, and the probability that the combined airline could actually deliver on those benefits.”
