N830MH

Why the airlines lied to all of those people? Because it's illegal. Those people is complaining about a ticket pricing, bag fees, reservation, and etc. I cannot afford to pay a ticket. They want me to pay $300 to $400 RT. That's stupid! I knew it! There is no cheap price in a long time and also, I pay a $200 ticket to LAS, but there is no special price. This is insane!!! It's illegal! You cannot pay a higher fares. We want to get a real cheap price with the reasonable fares. Good riddance to airlines!!!

Tchiowa

I think this is all about politics. A lot of screaming and yelling and huffing and puffing so someone wants it to look like the government is listening. There will be a report someday and it will vanish into Hillary's server.

BearX220

VX and AS don't do much for you when you have to fly BOS-MIA; in fact VX hardly flies anyone anywhere; it serves only 15 US cities. From most airports west of the Mississippi, B6 can only get you to a handful of destinations, often only overnight. And there are numerous regions -- not just cities -- where you're effectively down to one carrier. If you're headed to Grand Forks, North Dakota, your choices are Delta, Delta, or Delta. Northern New England is essentially US Airways territory. United offers no service within the southeast USA, that is, south of Dulles and east of Houston; try flying UA from CLT to JAX or MEM to RSW. American has no presence in the west coast corridor. And so on.

People count the nation's airlines, look at hot competition on NYC-LAX, and conclude there's no problem. This is not the case. Most customers are flying routes that offer less choice.

Fanjet

They offer less choice because there is a lot less demand for them. If everybody wanted to go to Grand Forks at half the demand level that they do NYC, do you think that DL would be the only carrier serving the airport?

Sabai

Well I'm sure the spinmeisters at Airlines Against Americans are beavering away at a vapid press release as we speak.

I heard an NPR piece on this topic the other day, and from the airlines' point of view, there was plenty of competition (Spirit and Allegiant figure prominently in their talking points) and it was all Sunshine and Unicorns in the skies.

[Where] was the DOJ when the cartels were being formed? The results cannot be a surprise to anyone sentient, and yet AA/DL/UA have the stones to whine about the ME3 providing alternatives to their fee-battered customers?

MSPeconomist

For many/most business travelers, Spirit and Allegiant aren't viable alternatives. In fact, many of us avoid Southwest and increasingly are booking away from UA. That leaves a choice of DL, AA, and AS on routes they share if we're using prices to select carriers.

OTOH many routes realistically cannot support much competition, especially if nonstop flights or convenient schedule choices are valued.

LarryJ

United has...
--Ordered more large (70-seat) regional aircraft to replace smaller 50-seat RJs
--Reported to be considering a new 90-100 seat aircraft
--On order, more than 100 additional B737 aircraft
--Cancelled or delayed the retirements of many older 757 and 767 aircraft
--Converted orders of smaller B787 aircraft to larger B777 aircraft
--Received four used B737 aircraft from COPA
--Leased additional A319 aircraft from China with options for more
--Apparently over-scheduled their existing fleet this summer attempting to meet demand to the point that their schedule reliability is being affected
--Orders for the A350 aircraft

If they are involved in collusion to limit supply they aren't doing it very well...

LaserSailor

The influence FT think it has on society is vastly over-rated.

It is amusing to see DOJ rubber stamp all these mergers, and then open a collusion case. Talk about generating work for yourself. Wait until the public finds out that airline tickets are priced to demand, and not on distance flown...and frequent flyers get benefits based on spend and not on BIS....

MSPeconomist

They also vastly over-rate their expertise.

Some government agencies create their own workloads (or over-rate their own importance and significance) to get increased funding and more staff positions.

Boo_Radley

My understanding was that the mergers were supposed to *create* competition.

viking101

Let's see UAL announces they are pulling out of JFK completely and selling their slots to Delta. And in return Delta will sell some slots to UAL in EWR. Both moves very anti-competitive so yes guilty as charged. I think the government is finally fed up with having approved these mergers and the service and fares turn very anti-competitive. Just my opinion

BearX220

Hyperbole; obviously GFK and JFK have different traffic levels. My rather obvious point is that just because we have ten airlines in the USA doesn't mean there are ten choices, or even three or four, on every city pair in the USA. Most people aren't flying JFK-SFO. They are flying from Bangor to Little Rock, or Spokane to El Paso, or whatever, and have one or two airlines to choose from, often at holdup prices.

The issue is not the crowd count at Gate 1 at GFK, it's overall reduced competition which appears to divvy up the country. UA ceding JFK to DL in a deal that strengthens its pricing power at EWR is just another example of this.

I don't know if current practice rises to the definition of collusion but I do know it does not net out in the public interest.

nerdbirdsjc

DOJ makes a grand case for the American people....except for the fact that capacity is up, yields are down, and the legacies are battling each other at a fever pitch.

When witchcraft masquerades as sound legal theory....

ckeegan04

What would you prefer. All three legacies and one of the others be required to serve all airports? Little airports are going to have a little service. And its going to be expensive. To maintain a station where an airline is only going to get a few hundred passengers in a day at most is not cheap. Making 3 airlines compete for those few hundred passengers is ludicrous.

The airlines are actually making decent returns for the first time ever and people are freaking out. Just because they are finally running their businesses intelligently doesnt mean they are breaking the law. And the last thing we need is Uncle Sam coming back and trying to tell them how to do it.

DenverBrian

I surmise that capacity is up to a large extent via seat cramming.

Personally, I'd prefer the government expend more resources to develop a minimum seat pitch standard of 32 inches.