Originally Posted by
joepercussion1
AA/US had to fight fairly hard and give up quite a bit. I would imagine the DOJ has had enough with airline mergers and will definitely object to this.
I doubt it. This will likely be the easiest airline merger in a while to get through any oversight. The Justice department can only object in the event that they can prove a major impact to consumers. Basically if this would give the airline a monopoly over a route or airport, or just produce a massive company with no competition.
Even merged they are only the 5th largest domestic airline. Alaska airlines does not have much of a presence at either LAX or SFO which are Virgin Americas hubs. If anything this merger may be viewed as helping competition since they might be able to better compete against the big airlines.