Spirit Airlines CEO says airline industry is a ‘rigged game,’ U.S. consumers are ‘long-term losers’

Spirit Airlines CEO Ted Christie talked candidly about the airline industry, calling it a “rigged system” and declaring that American passengers are “the long-term losers.”

Christie said in an analysis during an earnings call that “today, nearly all the profits of the entire U.S. airline industry are concentrated in just two companies, while the smaller non-legacy carriers scrambled to restore profitability in what seems ever more like a rigged game.”

Christie stated, “American consumers are the long-term losers, while the Big Four benefit from this new normal.”

Christie continued by saying that the carrier had only recently concluded that “the branding of the new facility might be blue.”

He was talking about the earlier in 2024, failed $3.8 billion merger with JetBlue Airways. When the merger plan was first announced in 2022, Christie claimed it “would save hundreds of millions for consumers and create a real challenger to the dominant ‘Big 4’ U.S. airlines,” but regulatory opposition was strong.

A federal judge blocked JetBlue’s acquisition of Spirit Airlines in January, agreeing with the Justice Department’s claim that the combination would make it harder for people to find reasonably priced tickets.

“Looking back a couple of months, we still feel strongly, it was a serious misreading of both the evidence and the law for the Federal Court to enjoin our merger with JetBlue,” Christie said to a team of analysts.

Christie concluded with saying “the fact that the DOJ even brought a case to block a merger between two carriers with less than 8% combined market share, just shows how uninformed the government is about our dynamic airline business, particularly in the post-COVID era.”

Featured Image: CC/Flickr/David Ackerman