reply A golden opportunity for Global airline mergers?

This should be a golden opportunity for mergers and acquisitions in the global aviation industry.The civil aviation industry has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic for two years, with passenger flows, cash flows and valuations falling off a cliff for many airlines. The United States is also planning to ease quarantine restrictions after Europe eased or even lifted quarantine restrictions starting in February. If the epidemic control is relaxed, it means that the air service market will be greatly lifted in the future, and people's demand for tourism, entertainment, education and other services will rebound greatly, and then the demand for air travel will also rebound in retaliation. At the same time, rising wages, fuel prices and airport charges have led to soaring costs in the global airline industry, which has been hit hard by the pandemic, leaving many small airlines in a precarious position. Fortunately, with the global outbreak easing, airline stocks, which have been in a slump for two years, are slowly recovering from the Novel Coronavirus-induced trough.So now there is renewed talk of global airline mergers and acquisitions.Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines, two of the largest budget carriers in the United States, agreed on Feb. 7 to merge, creating the fifth-largest carrier in the United States and potentially intensifying competition with legacy carriers. Frontier shares rose 3.5 percent and Spirit about 18 percent in intraday trading after the announcement. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2022.El Al said Feb. 3 it had signed a non-binding memorandum to acquire smaller local rival Arkia Airlines. Under the agreement, Arkia will become a wholly owned subsidiary of El Al. Arkia shareholders will get between 10% and 14% of Al in the form of stock and options.In January this year, MSC, the world s largest shipping company, turned its attention to the airline business. It is said to be working with Germany's Lufthansa to buy ITA, an Italian airline. The company is reaping big profits in 2020 and 2021, and investing in the aerospace division seems like a new way to deploy capital. Italy's ITA airlines said it had received inquiries from MSC Group and Lufthansa. The two companies hope to buy a majority stake in ITA, while also hoping the Italian government will maintain a minority stake. Lufthansa is reportedly in talks to buy a 40 per cent stake.However, the increased concentration of US airlines has raised alarm among regulators. The U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit in 2021 against the alliance between American Airlines and JetBlue airlines, which the government said could lead to higher fares in the Northeast. The current four largest U.S. airlines (American, Delta, United and Southwest) were formed by a series of mergers of 10 airlines over 20 years.But because of the influence of economic globalization, a company in the industry competition are not limited to one country, but in the face of economic globalization brings the plight of foreign companies to enter leads to increased competition, and superposition of two years the global epidemic raged and the rapid rise in oil prices to nearly $100 a barrel of unfavorable factors, national aviation service company can be said to be miserable. In particular, the recent spike in international oil prices was the last straw for many airlines.Looking back at 2007 and 2008, when oil prices were soaring, big companies in the global airline industry suffered a lot and small companies went bankrupt. The current situation is even worse than 2007, so the current wave of bankruptcies in the airline industry is likely to be repeated. Take, for example, the us bankruptcy court's decision in January to allow AeroMexico, the Mexican airline, to go bankrupt, and, predictably, the number of airlines likely to fail this year. The global aviation industry has been hit harder than ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, and this year may be the year when the phoenix rises from the ashes.