“The empty promises to do better from Spirit management just will not cut it anymore, we’re not the only ones, Spirit flight attendants show up to work every day, to basically get screwed over by management without a plan when weather gets bad. “I don’t think we have to keep repeating it,” Biffle said.While FOX5 has spoken with travelers frustrated about ongoing flight delays and cancellations, flight attendants tell us they are just as frustrated. When an analyst pressed Biffle on why Frontier hasn’t campaigned more aggressively and publicly for its bid, he said, “We have been pretty clear” about how Frontier views the benefits of its offer. “While we would unquestionably prefer to negotiate a transaction with you, if you continue to refuse to constructively engage with us so that we can deliver this value to your stockholders, we are actively considering all other options available to us,” Hayes wrote.įrontier CEO Barry Biffle said last week that regulatory review of a Frontier-Spirit combination “is already well under way and many months ahead of any alternative”. Hayes wrote that his airline’s divestment promises should comfort Spirit leadership about JetBlue’s ability to win antitrust approval. Hayes was far more blunt, even threatening, throughout a five-page letter last week to Spirit Chairman Mac Gardner and CEO Ted Christie. “We hope the Spirit board will now recognise that ours is clearly a superior proposal and engage with us more constructively than they have to date,” said JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes. JetBlue on Monday repeated the argument that its offer is better for Spirit shareholders: It would pay them $33 per share in cash compared with Frontier’s cash-and-stock offer worth $22.42 per share, and JetBlue’s offer was sweetened to include a $200m breakup fee if the deal falters. JetBlue would absorb Spirit and eliminate a budget airline that regulators believe helps keep ticket prices lower. While Spirit and Frontier are similar “ultra low-cost” carriers, JetBlue operates on a business model that is more like the big four - American, Delta, United and Southwest. However, Spirit’s board said Monday that the revised offer is unlikely to appease regulators because the revised offer still “makes clear that JetBlue is unwilling to terminate” the partnership with American.Ī Spirit-Frontier merger would combine the nation’s two largest budget airlines and create the number-five US carrier. JetBlue tried to satisfy regulatory concerns by offering to divest Spirit’s airport gates and takeoff and landing slots in New York and Boston and maybe in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The JetBlue-American cooperative venture in Boston and New York, called the Northeast Alliance or NEA, was opposed by Spirit and other competitors long before Frontier’s February bid to buy Spirit. The airline anticipates a deal with Frontier closing in the second half of the year. Spirit said its board continues to back the bid made by Frontier in February and views it as the best way to maximize value. The development was a reversal from last month, when Spirit said that after speaking with financial and legal advisers, its directors believed JetBlue’s offer could “reasonably” turn out to be the better of the two deals. New York-based JetBlue’s stock gained 1 percent, while shares of Denver-based Frontier fell 4 percent. Shares of Spirit, based in Miramar, Florida in the United States, sank more than 8 percent in afternoon trading. JetBlue’s CEO seemed to raise the possibility of a hostile takeover bid. JetBlue rejected Spirit’s view, especially after promising last week to make concessions designed to assure regulatory approval of its offer. “We struggle to understand how JetBlue can believe” that the Justice Department or a court would let JetBlue strike a deal with American, then buy Spirit, eliminating the nation’s largest low-cost airline, the Spirit board said in a letter to JetBlue directors. Spirit said antitrust regulators are unlikely to approve JetBlue’s offer because of JetBlue’s alliance with American Airlines in the Northeast, a deal that the US Department of Justice is suing to block. Spirit Airlines said Monday that it still supports Frontier Airlines’ $2.9bn takeover bid for the airline, saying it was more likely to win regulatory approval than JetBlue’s competing $3.6bn offer.
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