Originally Posted by
audio-nut
This has nothing to do with the reporting requirements for public companies. The DOT requires US airlines to submit O&D data and then releases it to the public. VX benefited from this data, by using it to find markets to serve. Now VX doesn't want to let others see their performance.
VX responded to this claim in their motion (answer):
Virgin America further asserted that while competitors could use Virgin America data to precisely direct their competitive response to Virgin America's low-fare service. Virgin America cannot, conversely, use Form 41 data to its advantage because of the difficulties in disaggregating competitors' market and aircraft specific financial data from a far greater number of markets, services, and aircraft types.
in essence stating that they can't use the competitors' info (of the specific type they were trying to conceal) to help them, because unlike them, the competitors have many different aircraft types and thus CASM, etc. Seemed like an interesting argument, but there was precedent (ExpressJet tried the same thing) and they lost. Again, O&D was just a small part of what they were trying to protect. Mostly it was financial statements, profit margins, etc.