In the February 7, 2022 New York Times article “Frontier and Spirit Airlines Plan to Merge,” AAI President Diana Moss says the Spirit-Frontier merger would end competition from low cost carriers.
From the article:
The U.S. airline industry has undergone a tremendous amount of consolidation over the past two decades, with the nation’s four largest airlines controlling about 80 percent of the domestic market. Spirit and Frontier argue that the merger would allow them to better challenge those large carriers. But a deal would also create a giant budget airline that could smother smaller companies, including two recent entrants, Breeze and Avelo.
“We basically have a four-firm oligopoly,” said Diana Moss, the president of the American Antitrust Institute, a left-leaning think tank and competition-law advocacy group. “Having this fringe of smaller carriers breathing down their necks is really the only thing left that keeps the Big Four on their toes.”
