Qatar-Saudi flights resumed on Monday as the neighbours normalise ties under a landmark agreement that ended a bitter three-year rift and allows families to reunite. Saudi Arabia and its allies the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt in June 2017 slapped a blockade on Qatar that included closing airspace to the country over claims it backed Islamist groups and was too close to Iran -- charges Doha has always denied. The quartet agreed to lift the restrictions at a Gulf Cooperation Council summit last week in the Saudi desert city of Al-Ula, after a flurry of diplomatic activity by outgoing US President Donald Trump's administration. The first commercial flight between Qatar and Saudi Arabia in three and a half years, a Qatar Airways service to Riyadh, took off from windswept Doha airport around 1100 GMT and touched down around 1200 GMT.<br/>
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Spirit Airlines and Southwest have “serious competitive concerns” about the planned strategic partnership between JetBlue Airways and American Airlines. Miramar, Florida-based Spirit on 7 January filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation, asking the agency to take a closer look at the plan, and ensure there are no anti-competitive measures within it that should be prohibited. Southwest says in an 11 January letter to the DOT that it joins Spirit in these reservations about the venture. Spirit’s complaint was not immediately available. “Spirit’s complaint mirrors Southwest’s concerns about the partnership, which are especially acute at slot-controlled airports that both American and JetBlue serve, particularly Ronald Reagan Washington National airport (DCA) and New York La Guardia airport (LGA),” Southwest writes. “The competitive issues … are magnified by the fact that JetBlue acquired the great majority of its DCA and LGA slots via government-mandated slot divestitures based on JetBlue’s role as an independent low-cost carrier (LCC) that would exert competitive discipline against dominant legacy airlines at those airports.” The airline adds that if American and JetBlue begin to coordinate their services, this “would obviously no longer be considered an independent LCC providing competitive discipline to American or other legacy carriers”.<br/>