In travel news for April 11, 2022 we have an update from the White House about the possibility of extending the Mask Mandate for Air Travel, movement on a new no-fly list from Congress, and an update on JetBlue’s offer to buy Spirit.
The Mask Mandate for transportation, including airplanes was going to expire on. March 18, but was extended for one month. Now we are a week away from April 18, the next date that this mandate is set to expire. The travel industry, including travel associations and the CEO’s of U.S. Airlines have been pushing for an end to COVID travel measures. The hope is that when the mask mandate expires, that we will see a relaxing or even elimination of other covid travel protocols, such as testing to be able to return to the united states. The White House has been silent for the past month until today. The new COVID-19 Response Coordinator for the Biden Administration said today that the extending of the mandate is “absolutely” a possibility. The Administration will be allowing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make the call on if to extend the mandate. Last month the extension was announced on March 10th, 8 days before the expiration. Currently we are 7 days away with no official announcement yet. We will continue to provide updates as they become available.
A Bipartisan group in congress has drafted legislation that would call for a lifetime ban from commercial flights for unruly passengers. The proposed bill, named the Protection from Abusive Passenger Act, would be administered by the Transportation Security Administration. This is in response to a sharp increase in aggressive or violent behavior from passengers over the last two years. The concern among the airlines is that if a passenger is aggressive or violent and has to be removed from an airplane they will usually be banned from that airline, but are still able to fly on other airlines where the behavior could be repeated. Having a national list could protect flight crews from those who’ve been removed from previous flights, and hopefully act as a deterrent. So far this bill is facing resistance from many republicans for for having such a dramatic penalty. We will continue to provide updates as this moves through congress.
We recently discussed how JetBlue has inserted itself into the Spirit/Frontier merger with an unsolicited bid to buy Spirit Airlines. Spirit has recently announced that they will engage in discussions with JetBlue. Spirit is currently bound to a merger agreement with Frontier, which was filed back in February. However Spirit can walk away from the Frontier merger if it’s board determines that it has received a superior Proposal. According to the terms of the merger agreement if Spirit were to exit the merger it would have to pay Frontier $94.2 million. Whichever airline merges with Spirit Airlines, the new combined airlines could be the the fifth largest in the U.S., sitting behind United, American, Delta, and SouthWest.