Alaska Airlines CEO is confident that the Hawaiian merger will happen

13.03.2024 - 06:49 / travelweekly.com / U.S.District / William Young / Justice Department / Airlines

Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci says the court ruling that blocked the Spirit-JetBlue merger has increased the chances that the Alaska-Hawaiian Airlines merger will receive approval.

"I think it's a positive for us," he said Tuesday during the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference.

In the Spirit-JetBlue ruling in January, U.S. District Court Judge William Young concluded that the law required him to analyze the merger's competitive impact on a route-by-route basis rather than on a networkwide scale. As such, Young determined that the proposed merger didn't meet legal muster because it would have hurt Spirit's budget-conscious customers in nearly 300 nonstop and connecting markets around the country.

• Related: Regulatory hurdles too much for Spirit-JetBlue to overcome

Alaska overlaps with Hawaiian on 12 nonstop routes. Minicucci on Tuesday characterized that overlap as minimal, but he focused mostly on the second portion of Young's ruling -- the judge didn't want discount carrier Spirit to be eliminated.

Alaska doesn't fly the same unbundled, discount model as Spirit, but in the Alaska-Hawaii merger, Minicucci equated Alaska to the position Spirit held in its merger effort with JetBlue.

"Our deal is completely different. We're actually the low-cost, low-fare airline acquiring Hawaiian," he said.

Minicucci also provided an update on the merger process. Alaska and Hawaiian, he said, have received their second request for information from antitrust regulators at the Justice Department, noting that such requests are standard procedure during regulatory reviews. The airlines expect to submit that information in May, after which the DOJ will have 30 days to review it.

The CEO said he expects to have more information to provide about the merger status sometime in June.