LUV/JBLU Rumors
 

Was reading the news on SWAPA (pilots union) getting pretty agitated over potential seniority erosion.

Jet Blue is looking in a very sad state after the American and Spirit rulings. Too small to compete at 25% of the size of the majors. Carl Icahn took two board seats last month.
The market cap minus cash looks to be under $1B with revenue of $12B (JBLU has $1.5B of cash). Southwest are sitting on $12B of cash with a revenue of $26B. If they were able to get regulatory approval it would not be a stretch. HA/AS was smaller but very concentrated.
The big three airlines have revenues in the $50-$60B range so a combination would get Southwest out of the half sized "major" carrier zone., depending on what they lose to route overlap.

Obviously Southwest historically want a single fleet/single class. The 737 program being such a mess works against that. I cannot help but think even Alaska must be second guessing getting rid of all the A321/A320 fleet in such a huge hurry.
They said they did not want to do international either but do, I cannot see much growth for Southwest slugging it out with the big carriers and trying to be nimble on route changes. I doubt the HI adventure is much fun either, especially with Hawaiian and Alaska merging. A321XLR and even the neo could grow them across the Atlantic without going widebody. A European feeder would probably be a big problem - but their old Irish friend may be able to help with that.

I’d like them to scoop up Air Namibia and end the confusion once and for all.

Southwest carries the most passengers domestically. I doubt the DOJ and FAA would ever allow the big 4 airlines to merge and capture more market share. If JetBlue were to end up in bankruptcy court, then I can see the big 4 and Alaska buying pieces of B6 similar to what happened with TWA and Pan Am. We are more likely see a private equity firm by JetBlue similar to how Frontier is owned by Indigo Partners.

Totally agree. If they stopped the last merger of smaller carriers, they are not going to let someone as big as SWA do it.