Alaska Airlines is still waiting for the federal government to approve its merger with Virgin Airlines.
In a conference call with investment analysts on Thursday morning, Alaska Air Group CEO Brad Tilden said the company has the money and the willingness, but it doesn’t yet have federal permission.
“As to timing, we were hoping to get this done a couple of weeks ago, and we’re obviously not quite there yet,” he said. “It’s hard to predict the exact timing of when we’ll wrap up.”
The merger of Virgin Airlines and Alaska Airlines was announced April 4 and has been in the works since. It would create the nation’s fifth-largest airline, but the U.S. Department of Justice is considering the merger on antitrust grounds, as it does with all significant proposed mergers.
Alaska Air Group includes Horizon Air, and the merger would put Virgin alongside Alaska and Horizon in the Air Group parent company.
Tilden said he is “confident the deal will get done” and called the move a “pro-consumer merger of two smaller airlines.”
At the end of the third quarter, Alaska Air Group reported having $3.2 billion in available cash to prosecute the merger, including $1.5 billion it borrowed specifically for the process.
“At this point, we’re fully prepared to close the deal once we have DOJ approval,” said Brandon Pedersen, Alaska Air Group’s chief financial officer.
Tilden said he was unable to talk about the merger in detail, including whether or not there are conditions that would stop the merger.
“We do have a pretty strong internal compass about what’s worked for us and what will work for us in the future,” he said.
Tilden’s statements came as the company announced its third-quarter earnings. Its net income of $256 million during the period was down from $274 million during the same period last year, but in the year to date, the company has reported $700 million in net income as compared to $657 million during the first nine months of 2015.
“2016 is shaping up to be a year of record profitability,” Tilden said.
According to statistics provided by the company, Alaska Air Group had flown 25.5 million passengers in 2016 as of the end of September, compared with about 24 million during the first nine months of 2015.
