Spirit has submitted a regulatory complaint against the “Blue Sky” partnership between airlines JetBlue and United that debuted last month.
In a complaint filed Tuesday on regulations.gov, Spirit said the joint venture “raises serious competition and public interest questions.”
It stated that similar concerns were raised about American Airlines’ and JetBlue’s currently defunct Northeast Alliance (NEA) partnership.
American has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a lower court’s decision to nullify the NEA for being “anticompetitive.”
Spirit’s complaint requested that the U.S. Department of Transportation extend its review period of the Blue Sky partnership for another 60 days. The carrier also cited previous regulatory comments from United supporting public access to American and JetBlue’s NEA agreements in 2021, arguing that this established “a telling precedent.”
“Based on the limited information released by United and JetBlue, the ‘Blue Sky’ partnership raises serious competition and public interest questions similar to the NEA,” the complaint stated. “Based on what is publicly available, implementation of these agreements appear to constitute an anticompetitive unfair method of competition that must be prohibited pursuant to [federal unfair competition law] or otherwise found not [to] be in the public interest.”
Spirit alleges that the Blue Sky agreement “creates the same anti-competitive incentives present in the NEA” and would turn JetBlue into “a de facto vassal of United” despite assertions that the carriers would continue to manage prices for their networks independently.
“Finally, the tie-up also promises coordination on high-value corporate accounts and, more importantly, helps perpetuate the unchanging lack of access in both New York area and Boston airports to new entrants and limited incumbents offering competitive prices to the public,” the complaint continued. “In short, this anti-competitive tie-up involving a dominant legacy carrier will neutralize the competitive benefit of an existing low-fare competitor (JetBlue), will raise fares, and will tend to weaken other value airlines, such as Spirit and others, by siphoning off customers attracted by access to the United loyalty program.”
