Tag Archives for antitrust.
Three years after American and JetBlue dismantled their Northeast Alliance, passengers are seeking class certification over claims it raised Boston fares. Meanwhile, American says JetBlue still owes more than $100 million from their final revenue-sharing reconciliation.
American, United and Southwest all offered the same $523 Chicago–Denver fare, reviving suspicions of price-fixing. Identical fares occur about half the time: ATPCO and near-instant competitor monitoring let airlines match prices without an illegal agreement—though carriers have sometimes tried to cross that line.
The simple story about Spirit Airlines is that the Biden administration killed the carrier by blocking JetBlue’s bid to buy it, but that is too neat and mostly wrong. Spirit was already failing because its costs rose, its product stopped matching what customers wanted, and the antitrust move that really undercut any plausible rescue came earlier, when the government killed JetBlue’s alliance with American.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
