American Airlines’ aim to team up with JetBlue Airways won’t be taking off after all.
The Supreme Court rejected on Monday a request by American to overturn a judicial decision that found that the company’s now-scrapped Northeast partnership with JetBlue violated federal antitrust law.
The justices turned away the appeal of a lower court’s decision in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department that led to the end of the proposed Northeast Alliance, which would have let the two carriers coordinate flights and pool revenue.
American Airlines argued that the antitrust violation ruling by the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrongly embraced a hostility to collaboration between businesses and was contrary to the approach taken by other courts to require evidence of actual harm to consumers in the market as a whole, not just the customers of the collaborators.
The company also said the ruling invalidated a joint venture that increased marketwide competition among all airlines and “threatens to wreak havoc on productive collaborations of all shapes and sizes.”
The November ruling came in a lawsuit the Justice Department filed in 2021 along with six states during President Joe Biden’s administration. Under Biden, the Justice Department made boosting airline competition a top priority and aggressively enforced antitrust laws.
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Author: Dillon B
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