OneWorld Antitrust Immunity Application
 

FYI: excludes BA/AA

Oneworld alliance applies for antitrust immunity
By Kevin Done, Aerospace Correspondent

Published: July 24 2007 19:43 | Last updated: July 24 2007 19:43

American Airlines, Iberia, the Spanish flag carrier, and three other airlines in the Oneworld global alliance have applied to the US authorities for antitrust immunity to allow them to work more closely together in the transatlantic market.

British Airways, the leading European airline in the Oneworld grouping, has been excluded from the application, however, as the UK carrier and American are not yet ready to risk such a move given the difficult history of earlier similar initiatives.

The US transportation department (DoT) has previously demanded that the two airlines, and in particular BA, should give up a large number of take off and landing slots at London Heathrow airport as the price for immunity.

Willie Walsh, BA chief executive, said earlier this year that BA was itself seeking to add more slots at Heathrow and was not willing to hand over any of its existing holding to competitors.

BA and American have chosen to wait to see how successful rivals such as Delta Air Lines, Continental, Northwest and US Airways are in their search for slots at Heathrow, before they consider a renewed application.

American said on Tuesday that it had applied to the DoT for antitrust immunity to allow it to collude legally with four other Oneworld carriers, Iberia, Finnair, Malev of Hungary and Royal Jordanian Airlines.

They are seeking permission to co-operate in areas such as codesharing, where airlines sell seats on each other’s services under their own codes, frequent flyer programmes, route and schedule planning, advertising and marketing, pricing and yield management and revenue allocation.

The application by the Oneworld carriers follows a similar move last month by leading European and US airlines in the rival SkyTeam global alliance.

The SkyTeam application included a request for approval of a planned transatlantic joint venture between Air France-KLM, the world’s biggest airline by turnover, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines.

A similar move was turned down last year, but the airlines believe that the new application will be approved as a result of the “open skies” deal reached earlier this year between the US and the European Union to liberalise transatlantic air services.

Henry Joyner, senior vice president planning at American, said on Tuesday “we believe that an alliance with antitrust immunity is of vital strategic importance and will help us remain competitive with other transatlantic alliances that already have such immunity.”

FT.com

what exactly does "antitrust immunity" mean?

License to charge pax lots more
 

Anti-trust immunity is simply a Government license to fleece the pax. If they all get to-gether and fix the prices they become "immune" from prosecution under the "anti-trust" laws. Anti-trust laws are there to protect the pax from corrupt, inefficient, expensive, overpaid airlines.

nice....

but thanks for the info:)

Anti-trust is US speak for Competition

ie Anti-trust law = competition law

Anti-trust immunity mean that groupings of airlines can collude on prices, however, if will not be permitted if competition is reduced: it is designed to allow companies to become more efficient together, but is not permitted at the loss of competitive market behaviour between different such groupings.