Alaska Airlines is buying Hawaiian Airlines. Will the Biden administration let the merger fly?

By DAVID KOENIG
AP Airlines Writer

Alaska Airlines says it will buy Hawaiian Airlines for $1 billion. That’s raising questions about how antitrust regulators will view the deal, and whether past airline mergers have hurt consumers. The Alaska-Hawaiian deal would be much smaller than a series of mergers that reshaped the airline industry in recent years. But the Biden administration is already challenging another smallish deal — JetBlue’s proposed $3.8 billion takeover of Spirit Airlines.