Socialist antitrust activists killed Spirit Airlines — and learned nothing



It is a bad time to fly. Willie Walsh, head of the International Air Transport Association, drove home the point this week when he warned that “war-related disruptions in the Middle East and rising fuel costs have shifted the outlook for airlines to the worse.”

Walsh pointed to the recent closure of Spirit Airlines, America’s most iconic budget carrier, and warned that more airlines could suffer the same fate if current trends continue. That means fewer choices for fliers and higher prices at the airport.

Before Democrats demand that courts second-guess another antitrust settlement, they should reckon with the consequences of the last one they cheered.

But blaming the state of air travel solely on the Iran war is far too convenient. Airlines are also struggling because overzealous regulators and left-wing antitrust activists decided they knew better than the market.

Three years ago, Spirit had a plan to survive. It struck a merger agreement with JetBlue, another economy carrier, to create a new, globally scaled affordable airline. The Justice Department joined six states and the District of Columbia to file an antitrust lawsuit blocking the deal.

In early 2024, a federal judge sided with the Biden administration and blocked the merger. Biden officials and congressional Democrats cheered. Without JetBlue’s capital, Spirit’s struggles mounted. The airline filed for bankruptcy and earlier this year shut its doors.

Now many of the same officials who applauded the court order that killed Spirit are trying to shift blame to President Trump. The American people should not buy it, especially given what those same Biden officials said at the time.

Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland called the judge’s ruling “a victory for tens of millions of travelers who would have faced higher fares and fewer choices had the proposed merger between JetBlue and Spirit been allowed to move forward.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) took to X to declare, “I’ve warned for months that a @JetBlue-@SpiritAirlines merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares. @JusticeATR and @USDOT were right to stand up for consumers and fight against runaway airline consolidation. This is a Biden win for flyers!”

Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary, openly bragged about siding with the Justice Department and helping prevent the merger in the name of protecting “low fares” and “competition.”

The reality looks very different now.

Spirit’s shutdown was the first complete closure of a major U.S. carrier in 25 years. It was caused directly by the same actions the Biden administration once boasted about.

Travelers lost a low-cost option. Spirit’s more than 11,000 employees saw their lives upended. And Spirit’s disappearance will deepen the coming travel recession. The airline placed downward pressure on fares for years. Without it, prices are rising.

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Travelers now face fewer choices at the airport. The remaining choices tend to be pricier, more consolidated carriers that no doubt welcomed Spirit’s demise.

One might hope antitrust enforcers would learn the obvious lesson: Bigger does not always mean worse. Sometimes mergers preserve competition. Sometimes they lower out-of-pocket costs for consumers. Sometimes blocking a merger kills the very competitor regulators claim to protect.

Unfortunately, many Democrats refuse to accept that reality.

Some of the same members of Congress and state attorneys general who supported blocking the Spirit-JetBlue merger now want courts to use the Tunney Act to second-guess other Trump administration antitrust decisions. The Tunney Act gives courts a limited role in reviewing antitrust settlements negotiated by the Justice Department. Democrats now want judges to stretch that role and challenge straightforward Trump settlements, including one merger backed by the intelligence community on national security grounds.

Historically, courts have deferred to the executive branch’s enforcement decisions. Democrats now want judges to intervene because they do not like the Trump administration’s policy choices.

Perhaps they should look in the mirror first.

Competition policy should protect consumers. It should not exist to punish private commerce, indulge ideological hostility to business, or let socialist antitrust activists pretend they can manage markets better than the people actually operating in them.

Spirit Airlines offers a painful lesson. The Biden administration, Elizabeth Warren, and other antitrust crusaders celebrated the decision that prevented Spirit from joining forces with JetBlue. Today, Spirit is gone, more than 11,000 workers have paid the price, and travelers have fewer choices at the airport.

Before Democrats demand that courts second-guess another antitrust settlement, they should reckon with the consequences of the last one they cheered.

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International airlines cancel flights to Ukraine fearing Russian violence



Airlines are canceling and diverting flights to Ukraine as the international community increasingly dears an imminent Russian invasion.

Notably, the Dutch airline KLM a subsidiary of Air France KLM has ceased service to Ukraine. Reuters reports that the Dutch airline announced that it would no longer be chartering flights to Ukraine shortly after the government of the Netherlands told Dutch citizens to leave Ukraine as soon as they possibly can.

Germany’s largest commercial airline and the second-largest airline in Europe, Lufthansa, began rescheduling flights to Kyiv in late January, citing the ongoing “problems” preventing airline staff from staying overnight in the Ukrainian capital.

Reuters reports that the United States Federal Aviation Administration has also instituted a ban on U.S. airlines flying over specific parts of Ukraine’s eastern region.

The Associated Press reports that SkyUp, a Ukrainian charter airline, said that a flight from Madeira, Portugal to Kyiv was diverted to the capital city of Moldova after the plane’s lessor banned flights into Ukrainian airspace.

In 2014, a Malaysia Airlines flight, providing service from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian and Dutch officials accused Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine of shooting down the jet with a surface-to-air missile manufactured by the Russians.

There were no survivors.

On Saturday, President Joe Biden had an hourlong phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden allegedly told Putin that there would be “widespread human suffering” should Russia invade Ukraine.

Biden also reportedly told Putin that Western nations were committed to finding a diplomatic way to end the ongoing debacle but that they stand ready for military intervention should it become necessary. Biden said the West is “equally prepared for other scenarios” should diplomacy fail.

The United States and its allies in NATO currently have no plans to send troops to Ukraine.

Russian leadership continues to deny that it intends to invade Ukraine, but it continues to amass military forces along the Ukrainian border. Russian troops have also been sent to Belarus to conduct military exercises.

The United States believes that Russia has amassed enough firepower along the Ukrainian borders that they could invade the country on short notice.

Should armed conflict occur following a Russian invasion of Ukraine the aftermath will affect far more than just Russia and Ukraine.

Western nations in NATO and the European Union are prepared to issue sanctions on Russia which will kneecap its economy and greatly impact the distribution of energy supplies throughout the continent.

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Biden administration considers mandated COVID-19 testing for Americans prior to domestic air travel



Top officials in the Biden administration confirmed in recent days that conversations remain ongoing about requiring Americans traveling on domestic flights to confirm a negative coronavirus test before traveling.

What's the background?

The federal government has not implemented testing requirements for Americans flying domestically. Thus far, the most stringent restriction for travelers is the requirement for face coverings, a policy implemented by the airlines themselves. The Transportation Security Administration also requires face masks in secure travel areas.

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a new policy last month that requires international travelers, including American citizens, to show a negative COVID-19 test prior to entry into the U.S.

What is under consideration?

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg confirmed in an interview with Axios that the CDC is considering implementing a testing policy for domestic flights, but played coy about the chances of such a policy becoming reality.

"Well, there's an active conversation with the CDC right now," Buttigieg said.

"What I can tell you is this going to be guided by data, by science, by medicine, and by the input of the people who are actually going to have to carry this out," he continued. "But here's the thing, the safer we can make air travel in terms of perception as well as reality, the more people are going to be ready to get back in the air."

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Meanwhile, new CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Monday at a White House COVID response briefing that testing passengers for COVID-19 before traveling would mitigate virus spread.

"To the extent that we have available tests to be able to do testing, first and foremost, I would really encourage people to not travel," she said, CNN reported.

"But if we are traveling, this would be yet another mitigation measure to try and decrease the spread," Walensky said.

What is the reaction?

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as the airline industry, have expressed concern over the prospect of mandated testing.

Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) said such a policy would "punish this industry and stop it at its most critical time from being able to overcome what we've all gone through and especially the aviation industry over the last year," according to Roll Call.

Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, also recently said, "I have concerns that the CDC is considering a national mandate that everyone have a COVID test before they fly. That would mean an immediate increase of at least 50 percent in daily testing capacity and I don't know where that comes from."

Meanwhile, Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO, said the Biden administration would hurt the airline industry if they enacted a testing policy.

"The furloughs that we saw in October would be dwarfed by the furloughs we would see if we had a testing mandate that we can't effectively run," she said, Roll Call reported. "It would be devastating and in that situation we wouldn't just be talking about lost jobs, we would also likely be talking about airline bankruptcies."