The CEO of JetBlue said he is expecting the Department of Justice to file a lawsuit to block the company's planned merger with Spirit Airlines.
Robin Hayes told the Wall Street Journal he expects the DOJ to block the merger in the coming week after signaling its opposition to it.
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“My expectation is that we will get sued by the DOJ this week,” Hayes told the outlet. “My sense is they came to the table with their minds made up.”
The proposed merger would see JetBlue takeover Spirit for $3.8 billion, and the deal would be complete around the first half of 2024. Spirit shareholders approved the merger in October 2022. Spirit Airlines CEO Ted Christie called the merger the "most compelling national low-fare challenger to the dominant U.S. carriers."
Hayes said his company and Spirit plan to fight the DOJ's attempts to block the merger, adding that the proposed merger would promote competitiveness.
“We’ve been talking about the lack of competitiveness in our industry for several years now,” Hayes told the outlet. “This combination is the remedy to that.”
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The Department of Justice is separately suing JetBlue and American Airlines over the Northeast Alliance, an agreement that allows the two airlines to sell tickets on each other's flights to popular destinations in the northeastern United States. It was designed to combat United Airlines and Delta Air Lines's dominance in the region. Six states, Washington, D.C., and the DOJ argue the Northeast Alliance between the two has upped costs by about $700 million annually, per a report.
The two airlines in the Northeast Alliance have called the lawsuit by the DOJ "absurd," saying that the department has no evidence that fares have increased as a result of the partnership.