Originally Posted by
Momo
First, in competition law, you don't have to speak to the competitor for there to be a cartel. You have to behave as though you were speaking to the competitor.
But it's OK if you simply respond to what your competitor has already done in a way which is independent of any express or tacit communication between you.
The classic example is a sale. Airline A announces a sale, tickets down from £300 to £200. Airline B responds once it sees the sale announcement by cutting its own fares to £200 in response. No problem with competition law here - in fact, airline B's response is exactly what you expect from proper competition.
Ditto with times when everyone is trying to raise their prices, but waiting for someone else to go first.
Originally Posted by
Momo
Second, the issue is that the fuel surcharges are being added to "free" tickets awarded unded frequent flyer schemes. That does not seem right if there is no real cost increase.
If the FF scheme allows a fuel surcharge to be added, then there is no problem with this.
In fact, if you think about why the airlines that do the price increases via fuel surcharges are doing it this way, you can see that it's no different from what they do with many of their corporate customers. For example, take a fare of £200 + £100 fuel surcharge. Corporate discount of 50% means the customer pays £100 + £100 fuel surcharge (a total of £200, rather than 50% of £300 = £150).
So if you're in a FF scheme that basically acts as a 100% discount off the base fare, you pay £0 + £100 fuel surcharge, just like the corporates do.