Tag Archives for competition.
The U.S. Departments of Justice and Transportation have launched a wide-ranging probe of consolidation and anti-competitive conduct in air travel. What they will come to learn is that the federal government has fostered consolidation, and has made it nearly impossible to have competition in aviation as a matter of policy for decades.
In November 2017 American Airlines announced Dallas Fort-Worth – Reykjavik service. They were only flying there because two Icelandic carriers started flying to Dallas. It was classic capacity dumping. Now with those airlines gone from the market, American is pulling out too — and moving their Reykjavik flight to Philadephia, where they’d have logically put it all along.
While there’s certainly been consolidation in the airline industry as America West acquired US Airways and then American; Delta acquired Northwest; Continental acquired United; Southwest acquired AirTran and Alaska Airlines acquired Virgin America this hasn’t led to higher prices for consumers. Government should remove barriers to competition, but it’s a stretch to suggest that the several large airlines in today’s industry constitute anything close to monopoly.
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 »
