Major US airlines are blocking cheap fares for connecting flights, lawsuit claims

A federal lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of a number of travel agents alleges the nation’s 3 largest airlines’ enacted new rules to block their least expensive prices from being used on many connecting and multi-city trips, a “conspiracy” to raise fares in violation of antitrust laws. Before the new policies, reservations computers would find the lowest price for each one-way flight in an itinerary and add them up to one price for the trip. But now the least expensive fares can’t be combined and travellers need to purchase each flight separately to get the lowest prices on trips with multiple stops. The new rules have raised the prices on multi-city trips, and, according to the suit, the airlines have put travel agents on notice that they could be required to pay the airlines the differences between the lower one-way tickets and the new higher prices. <br/>