Originally Posted by
Pi7473000
Luckily this DOJ does and is anti merger. These mergers have decreased competition and worsened service. If Hawaiian (which they won't) went under then another airline will step into the market to serve inter island flights. The only people to benefit are the shareholders and airlines. Customers do not benefit from airline mergers. The DOJ saw this with Spirt/JetBlue. Alaska and Hawaiian merger would eliminate large swath of competition across the Pacific. It is more than just routes they directly compete on. We will see what happens, but I am glad this DOJ has been anti merger so far! Customers do not need to bail out failed airlines with mergers.
Spirit and Jet Blue were different. Spirit is a discount airline and Jet Blue is a full service airline. In this case the DoJ saw it as the elimination of a discount carrier.
This Hawaiiam thing is totally different.....no one makes any real money on interisland, and those planes need to be replaced... plan laid out a 5 year time frame...maybe can squeeze more, but these planes are old. Add in the HUGE payment coming due, and there is no way this airline can continue to operate without an outside investor. This is not some place where some other domestic carrier can fill the void.....
There is almost no duplication over Hawaiian and Alaska routes, and this merger opens up all sorts of expansion possibilities for Alaska to push Hawaii flights east and actually get some competition in fares. Yes, there are 7 duplicative routes. You can protect those and call for no loss of seats for X years.
I guess we will see what happens.