No-frills travelers who rely on cheap air fares to cities like Fort Lauderdale, Florida, or Las Vegas will be the key focus of a federal judge deciding the fate of JetBlue Airways Corp.’s $3.8b acquisition of Spirit Airlines Inc., after a five-week US antitrust trial. US District Judge William G. Young in Boston signaled he will need to determine whether the deal eliminating Spirit as the dominant deep-fare discounter will hurt competition on routes favored by bargain-hunting passengers and drive up prices, as the Justice Department claimed in a lawsuit seeking to block the merger. “To me, that’s one of the key issues here,” Young told the lawyers in the case during closing arguments Tuesday. “What is my benchmark for balancing the loss to Spirit consumers against the downstream to consumers — perhaps a more affluent or business class — that all airlines compete for? How will I balance that?” JetBlue has argued it needs the merger to compete with the four major airlines that control 80% of US ticket revenue. And it says smaller carriers like Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc. and Allegiant Travel Co. would step in to replace Spirit’s low-cost offerings, some of which are also being matched by the likes of United Airlines Holdings Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc. The case is part of the Justice Department’s continuing crackdown on consolidation in the airline industry, and the outcome could reshape the competitive landscape for low-cost carriers. On Monday, Alaska Air Group Inc. agreed to buy rival Hawaiian Holdings Inc. for $1.9b in a deal likely to get the same scrutiny from regulators as JetBlue-Spirit. The trial has been closely watched by investors, particularly merger arbitrage traders who bet on deals facing regulatory opposition. The deal spread — the gap between Spirit’s stock price and the $31 payout JetBlue promised investors — has remained wide in a sign of waning confidence that the deal will be approved. The gap was $16.86 Tuesday. Young, who was nominated to the bench in 1985 by former President Ronald Reagan, has not indicated when he plans to issue a ruling. Story has more.<br/>
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A pilot accused of trying to crash an Alaska Airlines jetliner in Oregon will no longer face charges of attempted murder. A grand jury voted instead to indict the pilot, Joseph Emerson, on a felony charge of endangering an aircraft and 83 misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment, officials said on Tuesday. Emerson was off duty during the flight, and was riding in the cockpit jump seat. Eighty-three other passengers and crew members were on board, and he was initially arrested on charges of attempted murder for each of them. The indictment supersedes those charges. Emerson said last month he had never intended to hurt anyone. He said he had been struggling to discern reality after consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms, which he had done for the first time two days earlier. Text messages showed his eagerness to get home to his family, and he described being overcome with the conviction that his time in the cockpit was not real. Emerson acknowledged that in trying to wake himself from what he believed was a dream, he reached up in the cockpit and pulled on the plane’s two fire-suppression handles, which are designed to shut down both engines in an emergency. The pilots managed to pull his hands away from the handles, and Emerson left the cockpit. The flight from Everett, Wash., to San Francisco was diverted to Portland, Ore., where Emerson was arrested.<br/>