JetBlue reaches deal to acquire Spirit Airlines

A Spirit Airlines jet
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

JetBlue Airways on Thursday agreed to buy Spirit Airlines for $3.8 billion shortly after Spirit scrapped its proposed merger with Frontier Airlines, CNBC and The Wall Street Journal.

Spirit on Wednesday called off the Frontier deal moments before it was set to announce the results of a shareholder vote on it. The discount carrier delayed the vote several times, hoping to get shareholders to support it over JetBlue's more lucrative proposal. Based on Wednesday's closing stock price, Frontier's cash-and-stock deal was worth $2.8 billion.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.