Barry Biffle is juggling his day job as CEO of Frontier Airlines while also working to save a proposed merger with Spirit Airlines that would create the nation’s fifth-biggest carrier by some measures. This figures to be a bounce-back year for airlines like Frontier that cater to leisure travelers. After two years of hunkering down during the pandemic, more people are flying. Biffle says the recovery in travel will enable his Denver-based airline to return to profitability this summer. And he’s puzzled by doubters, including investors who are shorting the stock — betting that the shares will fall in price. On the merger, Biffle says Frontier and Spirit are answering regulators’ questions, and he is not alarmed that several liberals in Congress are urging the Biden administration to take a close look at whether the deal will hurt consumers. The bigger obstacle to a Frontier-Spirit deal is JetBlue Airways, which made its own $3.6b bid for Spirit last week. JetBlue’s offer is higher than Frontier’s $2.9b bid, which was announced in February. Frontier declined to make Biffle available after the JetBlue announcement. Story features an interview days earlier, when Biffle discussed regulatory review of the Frontier-Spirit merger proposal, travel demand and other topics. <br/>
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Brazilian airline Gol said Monday it expects to report a loss of 1.98 real per share in Q1 2022 and a loss of 78 cents per American Depositary Share. The company also said its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) margin should be at about 11% in the quarter.<br/>
Sichuan Airlines suspended one of its employees after contentious comments he posted online were unearthed, highlighting growing jitters in China after a deadly air crash last month. An internet user took to Weibo on April 10 to ask the carrier to prevent the staff member in question -- identifiable as an ethnic Mongolian Chinese national called Ayingga -- from flying because of his politically sensitive posts, some of which dated from 2015. “How did the aviation political review end up being like this?” wrote the poster, whose Weibo account has about 52,000 followers. “Is this person going to crash into a building with a full plane of passengers?” The Sichuan Airlines’ employee is accused of applauding the Nanjing Massacre, saying the people who died deserved their fate. The posts also included racial slurs against ethnic Han Chinese as well as a photo of the young man posing under what appears to be the national flag of the Mongolian People’s Republic. The original screenshots couldn’t be independently verified by Bloomberg. Ayingga couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.<br/>