Even the most obvious corporate mergers may not fly in today’s antitrust climate.
On Monday, the top two ultralow-cost airlines in the U.S.,
and
said they are combining in a cash-and-stock deal. The merger would create the fifth-largest airline in the U.S. in terms of seats, data from Cirium’s Diio Mi show. Their fleets, together comprising more than 280 jets, would be extremely easy to combine since they are both made up of models from the Airbus A320 family.
These are very similar airlines, even when it comes to their history. Frontier’s owner, Indigo Partners, used to have a majority stake in Spirit, and was behind both companies’ transformation into modern…
