As mentioned in the upgraded vs. full-fare thread, when not concentrating on earning FF miles, points and awards, Djlawman is actually an attorney who has a fair amount of experience in antitrust (Indeed, rumor has it he has even taught Antitrust Law at Rutgers Law School.)
Therefore, I am opening up the floor for questions in the antitrust area, and will try to answer them. Questions about the antitrust implications of alliances? Could airlines get together to police and outlaw "back-to-back" ticketing attempts? All questions welcome.
Now, of course, the legalese. Any replies constitute the advisory opinion of Djlawman, and are not to be construed as legal advice. For legal advice, you should consult your own antitrust attorney (you all have one on retainer, right?).

As far as I am concerned, back to back ticketing is IMPOSSIBLE for an airline to prove.

My question is - I am doing back to back ticketing? For example, I am the type that calls airlines, travel agents and looks all over cyberspace before I buy my tickets. Sometimes I have "beat the system" by flying to destination B, then returned to destination A months later. In the meantime, it is cheaper (I saved over $500) to go back to destination A from destination B two or three times. I have saved hundreds of dollars just because I have spent the time to figure out the very complicated fare structure of the airlines. What can the airlines do about this and how would they ever prove it?

I am quite sure that back to back ticketing on two airlines is really not back to back as defined in the fare rules(since it is not on the same airline)--is that a fair statement? Second, if you did buy back to back (true back to back--on the same airline), first from a travel agent and then the following day from the airline and the airline went after the travel agent for back to back ticketing--would that be antitrust or just plain stupid?

I'm wondering when back to back ticketing would be necessary? I never had the need to use it YET so I'm wondering those who can admit to trying it why.

Yes, this is off the topic, but DJlawman thanks for calling for this new discussion.

If I think of something antitrust related I'll let you know.

OMNI related: it's nice to see ANOTHER JERZEE
BOY (Besides NJ david and me) on the boards!
CATMAN

I'll start a new thread on why back to back ticketing might be necessary.

Thanks for the offer, Dj! I have 2 questions:

1) how do the airlines get away with coordinating fares and rules so closely? they all seem to have very similar rules and very similar prices. How could no class action (trebel damages) lawsuits never have been brought?? And how about the predatory actions taken by the biggies when a start-up comes to town?

2) Ditto on travel agent commissions? I always figured that if I were the travel agent association, I'd be in court in a heartbeat over the lowering and capping of commissions in such a coordinated fashion!

Ok, so I'm overly courious, but you did offer free legal advice... ;o)

Okay, here are my replies on the initial topics raised in this thread:

1) Back to back ticketing: There is nothing raising any "antitrust" issue by the mere contractual limitation by ONE airline of passengers and agents issuing or purchasing tickets on its airline. All it is is an attempt to "price discriminate" among passengers, depending upon each person's perceived demand for the ticket. For example, the Sat. night stay has evolved as the airline's easiest way of distinguishing between pure business travelers (like lawyers who have to be in a certain place at a certain time, no ifs ands or buts about it), and those whose demand is more price-sensitive (i.e., leisure travelers, persons with enough freedom to reschedule business appointments in another town, etc.). Similarly, other fare rules are being used to price discriminate in the same way, like advance purchase tickets, non-refundability, etc.
Back to back ticketing is simply a method of attempting to avoid the sat. night stay. If the conditions of the fare are part of the contract between you and the airline, the airline claims a right to enforce the limitations. however, as a practical matter, it is awfully difficult for the airlines to police against a particular individual (although they threaten to take away your FF miles!!). Horrors!!
Because the travel agents have a more continuous relationship with the airlines, the airlines try to enforce these rules by charging the "correct" fares against the agents, to scare them out of ticketing.
As I see it, however, the airlines are going to have harder and harder time enforcing it, with everyone's access to on-line ticketing themselves, and amultiple sites through which to do so (Expedia, ez-sabre, etc.)
There is an issue regarding price discrimination by the airlines that might raise issues under the Robinson-Patman act, which purports to outlaw price discrimination, but for that discussion, you might want to sit in on an antitrust class.
As this one is getting kind of long, I will post it, and deal with the coordinated fare and travel agent commission questions in another post.

Okay, here's the reply regarding the second subject, coordinated airline fares:

Actually, in a pure economy, with complete information available to all consumers, and a fungible or homogenous commodity, you would expect to see all sellers selling at exactly the same price. A perfect example used in economics and antitrust classes is grain, milk or concrete by the ton.
Given perfect price information, consumers will never pay a higher price for the same commodity. Thus, at a highway intersection, four gas stations will eventually gravitate toward the same price because 1) the price is posted on big signs, so all consumers have perfect price information, 2) gasoline is, for most purposes, the same commodity, and 3) the cost of going to any of the three is approximately the same. To the extent that they can price differentiate, it is because they may offer different services, or because their advertising has convinced consumers that their gasoline is somehow different--brand differentiation.
Where does that take us to with airlines. Airline seats are, at their basics, transportation between point A and point B. the competitors have perfect information about each other, because they have the ability to monitor the reservation systems to see what each is charging. So, you would expect prices to be the same.
However, they have been caught trying to coordinate prices changes with each other. A few years ago, the airlines were found to be involved in "price signaling" through the fare reservation systems (Sabre, etc.). Basically, the airlines were signalling intended price moves, by putting into the system price changes with future effective dates, to see whether the others would agree to it. It was actually a very public version of the airlines sitting around a room saying to each other, "okay, I think we ought to raise prices on these routes 10%, what do you think?" "No, I think I will agree to 5%"---without having to be in a room together doing it.
As I understand it, the consent decree that came out of that case prevents the airlines from doing that type of price signalling in the future.

Hope that these aren't getting too technical, and will try to answer on travel agent commissions soon. However, at the moment, have to go to Xmas party.

Okay, here goes on the issue of "predatory pricing." Predatory pricing is one of a variety of things which is illegal because it constitutes an attempt to monopolize, which is outlawed by Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. That is the easy part. What, however, is "predatory pricing."
Courts have struggled with this issue for many years. To understand this discussion, it will help to have some understanding of the concepts of fixed costs and variable costs. Fixed costs are those which a company is going to incur, whether it makes another marginal unit of production or not (or, in the case of airlines, whether they will fill another seat or not). Variable, or marginal costs, are the additional costs incurred in selling that additional or marginal unit of production. As examples, let's look at airline seats and gasoline. The fixed costs involved in Exxon's production of gasoline are the costs of building the refineries, the oil wells, etc. The marginal costs are the costs of the crude oil (if they buy it), or the energy and labor to pull it out of the ground, to refine it , and to transport it to the Exxon station, where you can buy it. So, there are a lot of variable or additional costs to produce that extra gallon of gasoline. As to the additional airline seat, however, there is a big difference. The airplane will already be flying. The pilots, gate agents, flight attendants, baggage handlers will all be paid, regardless of whether the plane takes off with 100 or 120 people on board. Sso, the incremental, marginal or variable costs involved in a few extra tickets is extremely low. The airplane will use a little more fuel, and they will use up some more soda and a meal (and we all know that is going to cost very little!!).
Some proponents have pushed the idea that a company is engaged in predatory pricing anytime it sells its product for less than average TOTAL cost. That has been pretty much discredited, and clearly could not be applied to airlines. Half or more of the people on board are probably paying less than average total cost.
The generally accepted measure these days is that a competitor is engaged in predatory pricing if 1) it has the potential to monopolize the "market" and 2) if it is selling at below its "marginal" or "variable" cost for the product.
For airlines, most antitrust practitioners and economists agree that the "market" is defined on a route by route basis, as "city pairs." For example, there is a market for transportation between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which is virtually monopolized by US Air. There is a market for transportation between New York and Los Angeles, which is flown by a dozen airlines (some direct and some through other hubs).
So, an airline probably couldn't be charged with predatory pricing unless it could be shown that it priced below its variable costs (for the extra seats that is decreased the price of to drive the upstart out of the market), and it had a legitimate potential of monopolizing that "city pair" market.
As you can see, some of these explanations get kind of technical and long-winded. I am sorry that I am not able to distill these answers into shorter versions. Hope that this is understandable. (Of course, I am being presumptuous--that anyone is still reading this thread by the time they get to this end of these answers!)

Thanks--we're still here!

Definitely here and listening! Thanks for your all your time to educate us on issues we may take for granted...

I am
- very interested
- listening/reading
- learning english (I never used my diccionary as intenively as on this topic)
- trying to compare US with European Antitrust law/politics (and Switzerland beeing different again)

Thank You.

If I would be an US-travel-agent being charged be an airline for supporting back-to-back-ticketing, I would (just to support my defense/arguments) prove that the airlines themselve (their own ticket-sales-offices) sell such tickets (I am pretty sure, that creating such a proof would be easy).

Wouldn't that help my case?

make that 'learning legalese', Rudi... very useful if you ever have to argue the rules with airlines.

djlawman, thank you for shedding light on these hitherto mysterious topics...