https://airlineinfo.com/ost22/ost113020.html#ATI
American Airlines, Inc., British Airways, Plc, OpenSkies SAS, Iberia Lineas Aereas de Espana, S.A., Finnair Oyj and Aer Lingus Group DAC
OST-2008-0252 - Antitrust Immunity
November 30, 2020
Comments of Delta Air Lines
Delta takes no position on the merits of the motion or the Department’s decision to grant it (
Order 2020-11-9), but strongly agrees with the Department’s tentative determination that the proposed ATI grant should be conditioned on the continuing enforcement of Heathrow slot commitments under the CMA’s oversight in order to maintain competitive discipline against the oneworld JV at Heathrow. As the Department observes, the record in this case “supports the ongoing importance of the Parties’ joint business slot access remedies in London for transatlantic services” and, further, that the Parties “must continue to make slots available as directed by CMA’s interim measures.”
In addition, Delta wishes to highlight the fact that the waiting period established by the Department to review the commercial agreements that undergird the proposed American/JetBlue alliance expired on November 19, 2020 without any Departmental action taken. Now that the Department has allowed the American/JetBlue alliance to proceed, there is no formal legal impediment preventing American and JetBlue from launching their commercial cooperation and
de facto market allocation agreement.
These commercial agreements substantially “connect” American and JetBlue, creating extensive interdependence between the carriers. Rather than compete head-to-head at New York City and Boston, JetBlue and American will rationalize and “optimize” service in the two cities to coordinate their networks and feed American’s current and JetBlue’s prospective transatlantic services. The alliance involves extensive commercial cooperation between two domestic US carriers with substantially overlapping networks – rendering JetBlue an ineffective competitor to American on transatlantic routes. In particular, JetBlue cannot credibly claim to be an effective competitive check on the oneworld transatlantic JV’s flights to Boston and New York – the same gateways that JetBlue proposes to serve with Heathrow remedy slots – while at the same time it is participating in a
de factodomestic market allocation agreement with American at those very airports.
The upshot of the JetBlue/American alliance, which has now been cleared by the Department to proceed, is that JetBlue is no longer an independent competitor to American – and is therefore ineligible to receive any Heathrow remedy slots under the CMA remedy process for the reasons Delta detailed in its Reply in this proceeding. Delta encourages the Department to take administrative notice of this fact when coordinating with the CMA on its investigation and implementation of the interim measures.
Counsel: Delta, Steven Seiden