Overview
- The House Judiciary subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust is set to hold a hearing titled “The 30,000 Foot View” on June 24 and Airlines for America CEO Chris Sununu is expected to testify.
- Spirit Airlines went out of business in May after years of losses and two bankruptcy filings, a collapse that eliminated about 15,000 jobs and followed creditors rejecting a $500 million rescue proposed by President Trump.
- U.S. regulators have recently scaled back enforcement by closing a July 2024 Delta probe, having the FAA drop a 2025 flight-cut investigation without fines, waiving an $11 million Southwest penalty, and withdrawing a rule that would have required cash payments to disrupted passengers.
- Republicans plan to argue that competition policies under the Biden administration failed to protect jobs while Democrats are set to highlight the Trump administration’s rollbacks of consumer protections and decisions to void or withdraw fines.
- The hearing will also revisit earlier competition actions including the 2024 court block of the JetBlue-Spirit merger and a Biden-era DOJ and DOT review that has produced no public findings, raising fresh questions about market concentration and oversight.