American Airlines loses US appeal of ruling barring JetBlue partnership
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/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2024-11-11/oneworld/american-airlines-loses-us-appeal-of-ruling-barring-jetblue-partnership
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American Airlines loses US appeal of ruling barring JetBlue partnership
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/>
