Frontier Airlines’ parent company on Thursday said it would pay a $250 million reverse breakup fee to Spirit Airlines if regulators don’t approve the planned combination of the two discount carriers for antitrust reasons, an effort aimed at convincing investors to approve the deal next week as rival JetBlue Airways tries to buy Spirit outright. “The combination of a higher reverse termination fee and a much greater likelihood to close in a Frontier merger provides substantially more regulatory protection for Spirit stockholders than the transaction proposed by JetBlue,” Mac Gardner, Spirit’s chairman said in a news release. New York-based JetBlue offered $33 a share, or $3.6 billion cash for Spirit, in April, above the $2.9 billion cash-and-stock deal that Spirit and Frontier announced in February. Spirit’s board rejected JetBlue’s advances, and JetBlue last month made a tender offer of $30 a share and has urged Spirit shareholders to vote against the deal. Spirit said a deal with JetBlue wouldn’t likely be approved by regulators. JetBlue’s offer includes a $200m reverse breakup fee if regulators don’t approve the acquisition. On Tuesday, proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services advised Spirit shareholders to vote against the Frontier deal, raising concerns about the lack of a reverse termination fee.<br/>
unaligned
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has suggested the army be drafted into UK airports for the next “three to four months” to help resolve the widespread disruption that has peaked over the half-term break. The airline CE said “defence personnel with experience providing security” should be deployed at under-pressure transport hubs to prevent the lengthy queues and delays that have plagued passengers this week. He told ITV News: “Bringing in the army, which they do at many other European airports, would, at a stroke, relieve the pressure on airport security and would mean that people have a much better experience – not just this weekend, but for each weekend over the next three, four months.” O’Leary also hit back at claims made by the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, on Wednesday that travel firms have “seriously oversold flights and holidays relative to their capacity to deliver”. Shapps, who met with aviation leaders on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the problems, had also said there should be “no repeat” of the disruption tourists have faced in the half-term holidays over the summer months. O’Leary said no airline operator “is going to deliberately sell a flight that they can’t crew or operate” and that crew shortages often happened at very short notice.""<br/>
Vistara, an Indian joint venture of conglomerate Tata Group and Singapore Airlines Ltd., has been fined after a first officer landed a passenger flight without completing required training. The incident, which occurred during a landing in the central Indian city of Indore, was a serious violation that endangered the lives of passengers on board, according to a senior official at the nation’s aviation regulator who declined to be identified talking about a confidential probe. The captain of the flight in August, which flew from New Delhi, also wasn’t simulator trained on how to guide a first officer during such landings, the official said. The plane ultimately landed safely without incident and no one was hurt. Vistara—51% owned by India’s largest conglomerate Tata and remainder by Singapore Airlines—was fined 1 million rupees ($12,900), the official said. Concerns about flying have escalated around the world, with rusty pilots returning to the cockpit after lengthy absences during Covid-19. A global shortage of trained pilots has also hampered the aviation industry—one of the worst-hit sectors during the pandemic—hampering a faster-than-expected recovery in air travel. Vistara gave takeoff and landing clearance to the first officer without conducting any training, the official said. Both first officers and captains need to train on flight simulators before they can land, or even guide colleagues to land, an aircraft with passengers on board. Vistara violated those norms, according to the official.<br/>