The Spirit and Frontier Airlines Merger Has Been Terminated

Flying can be complicated right now.

Travel Can Be Complicated

Between delays, lost luggage woes, staffing issues, and more, flying could be complicated for several more months and potentially another year. But the complications don’t end on the consumer side. When it comes to the major airlines making your trips possible, there have been some potential deals underway with complications of their own and now we’ve got an update about a HUGE merger that was in the works.

We previously shared that a merger between Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines was in the works, but a JetBlue offer to buy Spirit complicated things. Spirit rejected Jetblue’s offer, but JetBlue didn’t give up that easy. And now it seems the entire deal between Spirit and Frontier has fallen apart.

According to CNBC, Spirit Airlines has ended its merger deal with Frontier Airlines. Shareholers were set to vote only on the Frontier deal (not the JetBlue deal), but JetBlue had “spent weeks urging shareholders to turn the [Frontier] deal down.” Ultimately, Bloomberg shares that the shareholder vote was canceled and Spirit and Frontier agreed to terminate their deal.

Spirit Airlines Safety Documents

It seems there were some indications that the shareholder support simply wasn’t there for this deal. According to CNBC, Spirit had actually postponed the shareholder vote on the Frontier deal 4 times as it “struggled to drum up enough shareholder support.”

Frontier’s CEO also previously noted that they remained “far from obtaining approval from Spirit stockholders.”

©Frontier Airline

The rejection of the Frontier deal is a “blow” to the two major airlines that hoped to combine their budget airline forces together. But if JetBlue takes over Spirit, that could create the 5th largest carrier in the U.S.

Now that the Frontier deal has been rejected by shareholders, it could make things easier to get a deal with JetBlue. JetBlue is looking to buy Spirit outright for about $3.7 billion. It would then refurbish the Spirit airline planes to be in the JetBlue style (featuring more legroom and screens on the back of the plane seats).

A person familiar with the matter said that talks surrounding this takeover deal are ongoing, but it’s not a given. Things may not work out.

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As we noted, Spirit’s Board has rejected JetBlue’s offers before. It’s possible that no deal ultimately gets made here.

CNBC notes that there would be a “high hurdle” for either deal to face — that hurdle would be getting approval from the Justice Department, especially because the Biden administration has “vowed to crack down on consolidation.”

So where do things go from here? Only time will tell. For now, it seems the deal between Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines will not be moving forward, and a deal with JetBlue could still be in the works. We’ll continue to look for updates and let you know what we find.