JetBlue Already Has Plan in Place for Spirit Acquisition

Spirit Airlines has a June 30 shareholder meeting scheduled to vote on the two proposals laid before the carrier this year – a merger offer by Frontier Airlines and a takeover acquisition bid from JetBlue Airways.

Now Bloomberg News is reporting that JetBlue will hit the runway at full speed should it win the nod from Spirit Airlines in two weeks.

JetBlue already has a plan in place to integrate Spirit into its operations and has been working on it for months, according to Bloomberg.

“It is a very complex process,” JetBlue Chief Executive Officer Robin Hayes told the media outlet. “Our team has already started, for a number of months, building an integration plan.”

JetBlue appears to be making headway with its bid, even though it was late to the game. The New York-based carrier jumped in two months after Frontier made a $2.9 billion bid for Spirit by raising the stakes by half-a-billion dollars. JetBlue subsequently increased its offer, adding sweeteners such as a prepayment plan for Spirit stockholders and a generous breakup fee if the plan doesn’t receive regulatory approval from the government – Spirit’s big fear in rejecting JetBlue’s initial offer.

JetBlue has been, by far, the more aggressive pursuer of two airlines competing for Spirit, appealing directly to Spirit shareholders to reject Frontier’s offer.

Having plans in place ahead of the official vote is nothing new in the world of mergers and acquisitions; however, it is especially important in this instance since most aviation observers agree that JetBlue and Spirit have virtually no symmetry.

To that end, Hayes told Bloomberg that he has talked with his peers and colleagues who have been through this before – likely Delta, which acquired Northwest; American, which took over USAir; and United, which merged with Continental.

Hayes declined to divulge specifics of the conversations.