After putting the idea of an industry-reshaping merger with American Airlines behind him, the chief executive of United Airlines, Scott Kirby, said other deals might not be worth it.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Kirby declined to say whether United would want to buy JetBlue Airways, the subject of significant speculation by investors and analysts in recent weeks. Mr. Kirby said that doing so could consume resources without a sufficient payoff.
“Doing a merger takes a lot of calories and a lot of energy, and it’s about the same amount of calories and energy regardless of the size of merger,” he said. He explained that integrating the computer systems, planes, airport operations, labor unions and other elements of another airline could take years.
A deal that “has the potential to be transformative, like American would have been, is probably worth that,” he added. But he said “the hurdle is a whole lot higher for a small airline than it is for a big airline, for me.”
Mr. Kirby had raised the idea of the merger with American, where he worked for years, with federal officials. But American rebuffed his overture after details of that conversation became public.
Some industry experts and analysts have speculated that United could buy JetBlue instead to achieve some of Mr. Kirby’s goals, which include a return to Kennedy International Airport and an expansion of United’s presence at Boston Logan International Airport.
United and JetBlue already have a partnership through which United will get access to some gates and takeoff and landing slots at Kennedy starting next year. The number of flights at the airport is limited by the Federal Aviation Administration.
JetBlue, which has not reported an annual profit since 2019, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement on Monday, Mr. Kirby defended his proposed merger with American, even as he confirmed that United was ending its effort to engage the airline in talks. He said he had personally drafted the statement, which included a robust defense of the merger, over the weekend because he wanted to be clear about the benefits of the deal. He wrote the message on Saturday morning at Amangiri, a luxury resort in the Utah desert, where he was celebrating his wife’s birthday.
“It was hard for me to walk away from it with people thinking this wouldn’t be good for customers, because I know it would have been,” Mr. Kirby said on Tuesday.
With the deal off the table, Mr. Kirby said, United will seek to expand by, among other things, better using existing resources, including replacing smaller planes with larger ones that can carry more passengers. That strategy will be used on routes serving United’s hub airports like Newark Liberty International and San Francisco International.
Years of mounting costs and thin profits have weakened many smaller airlines, while United and Delta have become dominant by catering to affluent travelers. In addition, President Trump and other government officials have said recently that they welcome airline mergers and acquisitions. As a result, many analysts think a major industry shake-up could soon be at hand.
Budget airlines have had an especially difficult few years made worse recently by the spike in fuel costs caused by the war with Iran. The Trump administration is in talks for a loan of as much as $500 million to Spirit Airlines, which is in its second bankruptcy since 2024. And a trade group representing budget airlines asked policymakers this week for up to $2.5 billion in aid.
Mr. Kirby, who has spent about 20 days in Washington this year by his own count, said propping up struggling companies was bad policy.
“That’s how our capitalist society is structured. Different businesses, different models. Some of them work, some of them don’t,” he said. He added that it wasn’t long ago that Spirit and Frontier Airlines generated the industry’s highest profit margins and were viewed as disruptive to larger carriers, which were seen as “dinosaurs.”
Mr. Kirby also said he expected jet fuel prices to remain high for a while. Airlines have raised their fares to cover those costs, but eventually demand will probably fall as flights become too expensive for some people, he said. He added that United might use retrenchment by other airlines as an opportunity to grow. For example, he said that United may take plane deliveries that other carriers cancel or postpone.
“We’ve talked to the aircraft manufacturers and said when other people start to defer, which they’ve started to call them about, call us, we might take more,” he said.
