JetBlue Airways chief executive Joanna Geraghty is slapping down suggestions that her carrier’s commercial collaboration with United Airlines is the first step toward a full tie-up, maintaining that JetBlue is “absolutely” not interested in another merger attempt.
Geraghty’s comments, delivered on 2 June at IATA’s annual general meeting in New Delhi, follow United chief Scott Kirby’s assertion last week that he has no plan to pursue an acquisition of JetBlue.
The two executives’ comments have doused rampant speculation that United and JetBlue could be working toward a tie-up after revealing last week their new “Blue Sky” agreement.
The commercial collaboration will see the carriers exchange airport slots at John F Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International airports starting in 2027 and allow passengers to earn and redeem loyalty programme points on each other’s flights.
In the past two years, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) blocked in federal court both JetBlue’s Northeast Alliance with American Airlines and its attempt to acquire discounter Spirit Airlines – experiences that have left JetBlue uninterested in pursuing a tie-up, Geraghty says.
“We spent a lot of time with the [US] Departement of Justice over the last five years, and we’re playing it safe,” she says.
Geraghty acknowledges feeling frustration with the DOJ’s decisions after decades of airline consolidation resulted in the “Big Four” carriers that dominate the US market – making it ”difficult to compete at scale with those big carriers”.
”It was certainly frustrating, because the DOJ allowed all the other transactions to go through,” she says.
Earlier at the IATA AGM, Delta Air Lines chief Ed Bastian said his airline is unfazed by United and JetBlue’s plan to collaborate in New York, touting Delta’s recently announced codeshare partnership with Indian low-cost carrier IndiGo.
