More than three decades ago, the US Justice Department sued the major airlines for illegally coordinating fares through a shared database that provides travel agents and related websites with schedules and ticket information. The airlines eventually settled the case and promised to avoid colluding on prices. Now antitrust enforcers say the industry is at it again. Justice Department lawyers revived their concern over illegal fare signaling during the antitrust trial to block JetBlue Airways Inc.’s $3.8b merger with Spirit Airlines Inc. The practice is known as “flashing,” when airlines alert each other to price changes by updating and then quickly canceling them on the shared system. All airlines submit fare information to the Airline Tariff Publishing Co., known as ATPCO, a database used by travel agents, distribution systems like Sabre Corp. and online price comparison websites such as those run by Expedia Group Inc. “The airlines use ATPCO to attempt to signal each other,” Gautam Gowrisankaran, an economics professor at Columbia University, said last month during the JetBlue-Spirit trial while testifying as the Justice Department’s main economic expert. “The lowering of fares might seem like it’s good for consumers, but it’s meant as a signal to the other airline. It’s meant to tell the other airline, ‘back off and raise prices.’” ATPCO and JetBlue didn’t respond to requests for comment. In the lawsuit seeking to block the Spirit deal, antitrust enforcers highlighted an instance in February 2020 when JetBlue noticed that Southwest Airlines Co. was offering a cheaper fare on flights from Boston to Baltimore. The airline “flashed” the database to point out the discrepancy and signal that Southwest should increase its prices, the Justice Department said. Evan Jarashow, JetBlue’s manager of international pricing, testified about another instance, captured in a February 2020 email, where his subordinates said they would add and then cancel a fare change in the database to try to “flash American,” which was offering lower prices than JetBlue on Boston-to-Philadelphia flights. But Jarashow denied that his team sought to send a signal on pricing and that he couldn’t recall any other instances of the practice. <br/>
unaligned
Flight attendants at Southwest Airlines have rejected a tentative contract agreement, with 64% of them voting against the proposed five-year deal, their union said on Friday. The Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 556, representing nearly 19,000 flight attendants, said in a statement “this proposed contract is not going to heal the hurt.” Southwest’s flight attendants have been demanding higher pay and better work rules in the new contract. The previous contract came up for renewal in 2018. Rivals American Airlines and United Airlines are also still negotiating with their flight attendants. Delta Air Lines’ flight attendants are not unionized. The TWU Local 556 said on Friday, “we will go back to the table to achieve the collective bargaining agreement that meets the needs of the hardest-working flight attendants in the industry.” Southwest’s proposed contract included a 20% pay raise beginning next month and a 3% annual raise in 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028. The union had said that would have resulted in a 36% increase over the life of the contract for flight attendants at top of scale and up to 90% for other seniorities. The tentative agreement also provided for paid parental and maternity leave with insurance coverage. In the past two years, unions across the aerospace, construction, airline and rail industries have put up fights for higher wages and more benefits in a tight labor market. Southwest has yet to reach a contract deal with its pilots.<br/>
A Breeze Airways flight was diverted after a passenger claimed there was a bomb on the plane, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said. Evan Sims allegedly claimed his travel companion had an explosive device during a flight from Orlando, Florida, to Providence, Rhode Island, on Tuesday, according to an affidavit filed in federal court in Florida this week. The plane was diverted to Jacksonville. He and his companion, who were in a romantic relationship, argued onboard. Sims said he “was going to ‘fire up a vape,’” and “hoped the airplane did not ‘go down,’ ” the affidavit signed by FBI special agent Molly Chapman said. He also allegedly made comments about “needing to use the emergency doors” and questioned the crew about the emergency life raft in the overhead compartment, among other statements. Sims’ companion told him multiple times that their relationship was over. As the crew prepared to move her to another seat after takeoff, crew and other passengers heard him claim she had a bomb “approximately two times.” All passengers deplaned upon landing, but bomb detection dogs did not find one. Sims told special agents and an official from the Transportation Security Administration that “he was making ‘jokes’ about the airplane ‘going down’ because he was unfamiliar with the airline company, and he was nervous about flying.” He added that he wanted to get off the plane because his companion had broken up with him, and he no longer wanted to go to Rhode Island.<br/>
Norwegian Air said on Friday it had asked Norway's competition watchdog (NCA) to reverse a planned ban of the airline's takeover of domestic rival Wideroe. "Norwegian strongly disagrees with the NCA's preliminary assessment," the carrier said in a statement, adding that the two airlines mostly covered different routes and were not close competitors. The deal announced on July 6 is valued at 1.13b Norwegian crowns ($103.90m), subject to final adjustments. "I am hopeful that we have demonstrated to the NCA that the acquisition of Wideroe will be positive for the competition for air travel in Norway," Norwegian Air CEO Geir Karlsen said. The deadline for the competition authority's final conclusion is Jan. 3 of 2024.<br/>
France's national financial prosecutor (PNF) has opened a probe into the possible misappropriation of public funds that may have benefited budget airline Ryanair, said a judicial source on Friday, confirming an earlier report in Le Parisien paper. The source said the probe focused on Ryanair's operations at La Rochelle airport, and that it was also investigating local commerce and trade union bodies over this. "All Ryanair's agreements with airports are arms-length commercial agreements, fully compliant with the Market Economy Operator Principle. Unlike Air France and other legacy airlines, Ryanair does not use State Aid," said Ryanair, when asked to comment on the matter.<br/>
The boss of Ryanair has called for head of the UK’s air traffic control body to step down after an outage at Gatwick yesterday caused significant disruption. Flights were grounded and passengers faced hours of delays on Saturday after a system failure at the east-Sussex hub’s air traffic control tower. Ryanair’s combative chief Michael O’Leary said: “It’s time for Martin Rolfe to go. At an annual package of over £1.5m this clown has repeatedly shown he is incompetent.” The outage at Gatwick is the latest in a string of incidents at the UK’s National Air Traffic Service (NATS). In August, a “one in 15m” system-wide meltdown caused thousands of cancellations across the country’s airspace. “If he won’t quit, then transport minister Mark Harper should fire him. These repeated UK NATS system failures are unique to the UK and are not repeated in any other European ATC service,” O’Leary said. A review into the incident is ongoing. Gatwick’s NATs-operated tower has faced particular scrutiny since it was forced to cap flights in late September for weeks, after nearly a third of staff in its air traffic tower were unavailable due to sickness. Former British Airways’ boss Willie Walsh, who also heads up the trade body IATA, named Gatwick in October as one of the worst offenders in Europe for air traffic control incidents. Flight disruption caused by airspace issues remains a feature of European travel more broadly, with French Air Traffic Control strikes and the war in Ukraine affecting multiple flight routes.<br/>
Russia opened an investigation Friday after a passenger aircraft was forced to land due to a technical malfunction, the latest incident to highlight safety concerns in Moscow's aviation industry. Sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine have effectively cut Russia off from Western plane manufacturers Airbus and Boeing, making it difficult for Russian airlines to import and maintain plane parts. The plane, a Boeing 737-800 operated by S7 airlines, was traveling from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk to Moscow on Friday before an engine failure forced it to turn back to the airport, investigators said. "The landing was made safely. There were no casualties. The causes and circumstances of the accident are being established," they added. In a separate incident the day before, a Tu-204 cargo plane was forced to land in Siberia due to an engine fire. The majority of planes operated by Russian airlines are made by either Airbus or Boeing, Western companies that have stopped doing business with Russia. The Kommersant newspaper reported in October that S7 would reduce its autumn/winter flight schedule by 10-15% due to difficulty servicing the engines on its Airbus planes.<br/>
An Arkia Airlines flight from Eilat landed safely at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport on Friday, as a barrage of rockets fired by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip on the center of the country flew by. As shocked passengers watched the Iron Dome missile defense system in action through the plane windows, sirens wailed in towns and cities surrounding the international airport, including Kfar Chabad, Or Yehuda and Rishon Lezion, alerting residents on the ground to take shelter. Tel Aviv, Rehovot and Bat Yam were also targeted in the missile attack. There were no casualties in the barrage. Unlike fighter jets, passenger airplanes aren’t able to move quickly enough to dodge missiles, retired Air Force commander Eitan Ben Eliyahu told Channel 12 news on Saturday. Instead, he explained, pilots can fire up the engines and climb to a higher altitude in order to land on a different runway, or even a different airport if fuel allows. “There is some risk, but it’s relatively low,” Ben Eliyahu added. Videos filmed on cellphones from the window of the Embraer airliner showed the Iron Dome interceptions, along with expressions of fear and awe from passengers.<br/>
Air Arabia Abu Dhabi, the capital’s first low-cost carrier, has announced the launch of its inaugural flight to the Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo. The airline will connect Abu Dhabi to the Lankan capital with three flights a week - on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. The Abu Dhabi airline continues to enhance global connectivity to and from the capital of the UAE, serving a total of 28 destinations with a fleet of 10 Airbus A320 aircraft directly from Terminal A at Abu Dhabi International Airport. Group CEO Adel Al Ali said: "We are happy to announce the commencement of our flights from Abu Dhabi to Colombo. We recently relocated our Abu Dhabi operations to Terminal A, a state-of-the-art new facility at Abu Dhabi International Airport, and this launch further demonstrates our commitment to delivering smooth travel experiences for passengers and contributing to the growth of the travel and tourism sectors in both countries." According to him, the cabin configuration across Air Arabia’s fleet provides added comfort with one of the most generous seat-pitch of any economy cabin. "Passengers can enjoy a variety of snacks and meals from ‘SkyCafe’ at affordable prices in addition to a free in-flight streaming service ‘SkyTime’, that allows passengers to enjoy watching a wide selection of entertainment directly on their personal devices. Passengers can additionally earn, transfer, and spend points through the carriers’ innovative and generous loyalty program ‘Air Rewards’," he added.<br/>