John Ostrower

And JetBlue ultimately won the bidding war because when you've got shareholders, they want the best deal.

Regardless of whether or not that deal makes sense, they want the best deal that serves their interests.

And so JetBlue won.

Well, the U.S.

government and the Biden administration sued to block the merger.

They won, and that ultimately sent Spirit on this trajectory.

There was really a sense that Spirit was not going to be a sustainable business going forward.

So it's been sort of a process to that point.

Let me ask you about something that we've talked about on the show quite a bit.

There are a lot of industries that have been hit by the war in Iran, including industries that I think are not immediately obvious.

We all know that gas prices have gone up, et cetera, et cetera.

But I wonder whether or not ripple effects from the war affected Spirit Airlines at all.

Oh, absolutely.

So the pre-exit from bankruptcy plan, which I think landed just before the war began, if I recall correctly, called for them to move away from flying with the latest generation technology engine airplanes, which burn about 15% less fuel than the airplanes that they replace.

So they're an entirely Airbus operator.

They were going to put the same Airbus airplane, but just a newer generation of engines.

That was the plan for a while.

Well, that newer generation of engines turned out to be really expensive.

And actually, the maintenance costs for these very exquisite engines to deliver the fuel burn performance, they weren't as reliable.

They weren't as durable.