A U.S. appeals court on Friday held that a trial judge correctly found that American Airlines' AAL.O now-scrapped U.S. Northeast partnership with JetBlue Airways JBLU.O violated federal antitrust law. Siding with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a trial judge's ruling blocking the airlines' "Northeast Alliance," which had allowed the two carriers to coordinate flights and pool revenue. U.S. Circuit Judge William Kayatta, writing for a three-judge panel, said the trial judge had been "presented with an arrangement that had many of the essential attributes of an agreement between two powerful competitors sharing revenues and divvying up highly concentrated markets." He said the judge, Leo Sorokin, following a non-jury trial had in May 2023 issued a ruling with "detailed findings of fact, many key ones of which were unfavorable to American," and none of which were clearly wrongly legally analyzed. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement called the ruling "a hard-won victory for the millions of Americans who count on competition between airlines to fly affordably, whether to visit family, to go on vacation, or to travel for business."<br/>
oneworld
International Airlines Group has reported a second summer of record profits, with sustained demand for transatlantic travel helping the owner of British Airways outperform its European rivals. The Anglo-Spanish company reported an operating profit before exceptional items of E2.01b for the three months to the end of September, 15% higher than a year earlier and a record quarter for the company. IAG, which owns five airlines including BA, also announced a E350m share buyback programme, reflecting “our confidence in the strategy and business model, as well as the long-term prospects for the business”. “Demand remains strong across our airlines and we expect a good final quarter of 2024 financially . . . we don’t see any weakness in the future,” said CE Luis Gallego. IAG shares rose 6% in morning trading on Friday in London as the results beat analysts’ expectations. The strong results and bullish outlook contrast buck the gloom among the group’s competitors in Europe, which have struggled to match last summer’s record-breaking profits. They also come despite BA facing major operational problems. Flight delays and cancellations have risen significantly at the UK-based carrier since the Covid-19 pandemic, even though the company put extra resources into this summer’s operations at Heathrow, which suffers from congestion and air traffic delays Industry executives believe BA will have to do more, even at the expense of future financial returns, and the airline has trimmed back its winter flying schedule. “I think we have got to reflect on what next summer will be like,” said BA CE Sean Doyle. “We will want to be more resilient and better next summer, on the basis that I don’t think that external environment may improve too much.”<br/>
IAG unit British Airways is continuing to work through the challenges on its Rolls-Royce Trent 1000-powered Boeing 787s which prompted it to remove some its planned winter capacity, while remaining on the lookout for options to bolster its long-haul fleet. BA pulled back some of its planned capacity growth citing delays to the delivery of engines and parts from Rolls-Royce – particularly in relation to the Trent 1000 engines powering its Dreamliners. The Oneworld carrier will grow capacity 4% in the fourth quarter, slightly below the group capacity increase of 5% for the period. ”We are having the same issues like everyone is having. So we have reduced the [winter] programme because we don’t have enough engines,” said IAG CE Luis Gallego during a third-quarter earnings call on 8 November. ”We are improving the technical dispatch for our A380s and that is helping. In general we are happy with performance of the fleet, but it is true we have an issue with the 787s we are trying to solve.” BA CE Sean Doyle says the carrier took out capacity as the scale of the impact on the 787s increased towards the end of the summer. ”I think that’s worked and our completion factor has improved materially since we made that intervention,” he says. ”On the A380 we have seen a big improvement in TDR [technical dispatch reliability] and our completion factor is a lot better tin the second half of the year than it was in the first. In essence we are still working through the 787 impact for next summer, but our focus will be on making sure the operation is resilient and building on the progress we have made in the last six weeks.”<br/>