The April 8, 2022 New York Times story Bidding War for Spirit Could Undercut Power of Four Big Airlines cites AAI’s opposition to the proposed merger of Spirit and Frontier. Last week, AAI sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice explaining why the proposed merger would likely harm consumers through higher fares, ancillary fees, and lower quality. The letter also explains why any promised benefits from the merger should be viewed skeptically by enforcers. The NYT article cites AAI research on the how past airline mergers have had difficulty in delivering promised benefits. The 2013 report Delivering the Benefits? Efficiencies and Airline Mergers has been cited widely over the last several years.
From the NYT article:
“Diana Moss, the president of the American Antitrust Institute, a left-leaning organization that has long called for tougher enforcement of competition laws, has asked the Justice Department to block the Spirit-Frontier deal. Ms. Moss and others published a study in 2013 that concluded that airlines don’t deliver on the benefits they claim their mergers will provide.”
