John Ostrower

No space at your feet, but hey, at least it's cheap.

That you would walk up to an airline and say, okay, I just want to get from point A to point B. I don't want to pay for bags.

I don't want to pay for early boarding.

All the things that come along that you can get charged for at an airline.

But again, just the seat, point A to point B with a ton of restrictions.

They could match

their pricing or get close, but also be able to offer more frequency because they're bigger, better networks because they're bigger, better amenities because they're bigger.

Again, this is very much the big airlines using their scale against the small carriers.

So what has in aggregate happened, the big airlines actually have now a larger ultra low cost basic economy footprint than the entire basic economy ultra low cost footprint airlines do in America.

I remember Spirit trying to merge with another low cost carrier a few years back.

It seemed like kind of a bid to save itself.

What happened there?

Yeah.

So there was a bidding war for Spirit because I think there was a clear picture that Spirit was on a trajectory that was unsustainable.

And at first, Frontier Airlines stepped in to try and merge with Spirit.

That is probably the closest analog in terms of business model in America and that that would have created a much larger combined carrier.

JetBlue swooped in for a bidding war.

Frontier and Spirit joining forces.

The two largest low-cost airlines in the U.S.

are hoping to merge.