We’ll see how things go with Frontier Spirit, but airline mergers often feature executives waxing enthusiastic about exciting synergies and many millions of dollars in savings to be realized by the merger, while the actual nitty-gritty of combining two airlines becomes a messy affair into which the promised synergies and savings vanish.

I don’t think I agree with this. Between any two major cities in the United States, you can basically have your pick of American, United, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and now the new Sprontier. That’s six airlines. You can add Alaska, too, in many markets. Yes, particular carriers dominate particular cities, both at hubs and at smaller cities served by their regional partners. But it’s ALWAYS been this way, and it’s rare that a location not offer a choice of at least two or three carriers. I understand your point with respect to more competition resulting in better service and efficiency, but fares are CHEAPER, on average, than they were in the days when we had ten or twelve airlines duking it out, versus the number we have now. Exactly how much competition is enough, by your measure?

I also disagree with the merger making sense. It makes NO sense for customers/consumers. What they need is fierce competition. They should benefit from innovation and efficiency that arises when carriers have to fight each other tooth and nail in the market with their product. I don’t care if my carrier is big. I do care that they are efficient and offer good value. The best insurance for that is to have many of them and let them duke it out every single day.

The pilot is also wrong about the US having “plenty of robust competition”. That’s of course nonsense and sounds more like airline exec than employee or customer. We DON’T have enough competition. Which is why these days we have just a single trans-con carrier that isn’t engaged in this preposterous race to the bottom (B6). It’s also why almost all carriers charge essentially the same bag fees. Or offer the same lousy service. If we had robust competition in this vast country of frequent fliers, there would be multiple Spirits and multiple JetBlues and lots going on in between. But there isn’t. I hope regulators finally grow a pair and block this merger. Just like they should have before we were left with just three cell carriers.