Originally Posted by eponymous_coward

I would be skeptical about Virgin America buying an airline that isn't making a profit as it's operating today, that has a fleet THREE TIMES the size of VX's current fleet (F9= 62 planes, VX=21). It screams "operational headache" while you try and integrate work forces/adjust routes/corporate culture, plus realistically, if they can't get ONE dark plane out of their fleet fast enough, can you imagine how long it's going to take to get 62 of them fitted out with Red?

Seriously, why not just hand customers hundred dollar bills as they get on the plane? That would be another way to to burn through a lot more cash than they are already, while trying to get to profitability with $130/bbl oil, and it would probably do a lot more for customer satisfaction than trying to merge with a competitor that can't make their current business model work.

Now, if Frontier goes fully belly up and there are useful assets you can nab from the fire sale that make financial sense, that's another story, but I think until VX gets to their 5 year expansion goal of 100 planes, they should strictly worry about their expansion plans and building up their corporate DNA, and leave the M&A game to legacy airlines, like AA/TWA and HP/UA (which haven't exactly done wonders for the surviving partners).