USA: American, Southwest In Price-fixing Lawsuit Worth $60M

An ongoing nationwide litigation by passengers who claim that the four largest U.S. carriers – American Airlines, Delta, Southwest, and United the Defendants, conspired along with US Airways and Continental Airlines to increase fares by limiting capacity on domestic flights, has reached a turning point.

Southwest and American Airlines the Settling Defendants, have agreed to pay a total sum of $60 million to settle the litigation.

If you bought a domestic airline ticket on American, Delta, Southwest, United, Continental, or US Airways between July 1, 2011 and June 14, 2018 your rights could be affected, opens the official website for the Domestic Airline Travel Antitrust Litigation Settlements.

According to the website, a class action lawsuit has been filed against the four largest U.S. carriers, claiming the Defendants agreed to limit capacity on domestic flights. The lawsuit alleges that ticket purchasers may have paid artificially inflated prices as a result.

The affected include persons and entities who purchased tickets for flights within the U.S. and its territories and the District of Columbia from American Airlines, Delta, Southwest, United, Continental, or US Airways at any time between July 1, 2011, and December 20, 2017, for the Southwest settlement and between July 1, 2011, and June 14, 2018, for the American Airlines settlement.

As of October 19, 2018, two settlements have been reached: Southwest has agreed to pay $15 million and American Airlines has agreed to pay $45 million, settlement documents indicate.

The Settling Defendants also agreed to provide certain cooperation against the remaining carriers in the ongoing litigation the Non-Settling Defendants.

Both Southwest and American deny that they did anything wrong and have asserted defenses to the Plaintiffs’ claims.

American has settled a lawsuit that claimed passengers were harmed by an alleged agreement among airlines to restrict domestic capacity growth.

The settlement does not include any admission of wrongdoing, and we continue to deny, without qualification, that American participated in any such agreement, the company’s October 23, 2018, email to AeroTime reads.

According to American, the facts are that the carrier dramatically increased domestic capacity during the period in question, while also taking delivery of hundreds of new aircraft.

The airline stated that investments made in its network were beneficial to customers, as reflected in the increase of domestic passenger traffic, which actually led to fares dropping to near all-time lows.

The carrier identifies the cost of the litigation as the key reason behind its decision to settle, maintaining that it is up to each individual airline company to decide when and where to add routes or flights.

Despite our firm conviction in the appropriateness of our actions, costs to defend against antitrust litigation often run into the tens of millions of dollars.

So while it is difficult to agree to a settlement when we believe we’re right on the law and the facts, settling this case is a prudent decision for American, the company stated.

Southwest confirmed it had agreed to settle at a payment of $15 million, pointing to the substantial burden and distraction an antitrust class action such as this would impose on the company in the long term.

Southwest was confident that it would have ultimately prevailed in this litigation, spokeswoman for Southwest, Michelle Agnew, said in an October 24, 2018, letter.

However, after careful consideration of the considerable expense and inconvenience that would have been entailed in this continued litigation, the company decided to enter into settlement.

The lawsuit goes several years back when on October 13, 2015, the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated 23 actions pending in seven districts and handed over the consolidated class action to the court of the District of Columbia.

Case documents show that the Defendants moved to dismiss the consolidated complaint, but the motion was denied in October 2016. At that time, the total number of cases consolidated in this class action rose to 105.

According to information released by Keller Rohrback LLP, the current case status is that litigation is proceeding to discovery, including discovery of both defendants and many third parties. Discovery will continue into 2019, the law office states.

The Antitrust Litigation website informs that the settlements reached with Southwest and American do not impact claims in the lawsuit against the Non-Settling Defendants – Delta and United.

The lawsuit, claiming the remaining carriers fixed prices for domestic airline tickets by keeping capacity artificially low, is ongoing against them.

Spokeswoman for United, Erin Benson Scharra, said - We will continue to defend ourselves against these claims, which we have always maintained are without merit.

It seems American and Southwest have played it safe, while remaining completely defiant. Let us see if United and Delta will be the next to give in and if so, at what price.

As for the other two carriers mentioned in the claims, both had merged with their parent companies years ago: US Airways merged with American Airlines back in 2015 and the two now operate under a single certificate; Continental Airlines was brought under United’s wings in a 2012 merger.


Tourism Observer

UNITED KINGDOM: Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) Is Most Compliant Airline At Heathrow Airport

London’s main gateway, Heathrow Airport (LHR) has unveiled its quarterly list featuring the top 50 noisiest, nastiest, most polluting airlines that fly into the busy airport.

The world’s seventh busiest airport, which registered the 78 million passenger mark in 2017, publishes this list on a quarterly basis, depicting those airlines that like behave, and those that don’t.

During the first quarter of 2018, EgyptAir hits the bottom of the list as the worst airline in the - noise quota count per seat measure.

This section measures the amount of noise a plane makes in relation to the number of passengers it carries.

The Egyptian carrier also scored the last spot, becoming the noisiest, and the one with most violations.

According to LHR, the Cairo-based airline flew routes, and that were less compliant with the noise abatement regulations around the airport.

The airline currently operates four flights per day to Cairo, departing at 13:30, 15:00, 21:05, and 22:35.

London-Heathrow has received thousands of complaints over the last decade because of the noise arriving and departing aircraft produce when operating in/out of the airport.

For this reason, there are pre-established arriving and departing noise preferred routes that airlines must comply with.

EgyptAir’s poor ranking is commensurate with its current flight schedule. The airline often runs delayed between the 23:30 and 04:30 curfew.

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) scored the first spot as the most compliant airline of all.

Out of a possible score of 1,000 points, SAS landed at 944.

In the second place, LOT Polish Airlines follows with 938. Aer Lingus, Etihad Airways, Flybe, British Airways, Finnair, Delta, United, and Iberia complete the top-10.

During the same period in 2017, British Airways came up in the first spot, followed by Aer Lingus.

Etihad managed to keep the third spot for its second consecutive year.

As far as the local airlines are concerned, Virgin Atlantic keeps the 17th spot, scoring a modest 855 points.

The airline scored the 6th spot in noise quota per seat but dropped to the 36th spot in track keeping violations.

Flybe, however, was the number-one in noise certification, engine emissions certification, and early movements between 23:30 and 04:30.

British Airways (BA) long haul made the 22nd spot with an 824 mark.

The airline reached the second place in noise quota and emissions per seat. However, it fell to the last spot in engine emissions certification.

In the short haul segment, BA remains within the Top 10, scoring 935 points. The airline made the number-one position in noise quota and emissions per seat mark.

Overall, it’s a positive result for the British carriers, scoring decent points and remaining in acceptable positions against its competitors.

The middle of the table finds some interesting airlines.

In the 20th spot, Air India marked an 840 score, followed by Cathay Pacific, Aegean Airlines, Swiss, Qatar Airways, Air France, South African, Eurowings, Singapore, and Thai Airways.

Two of the Middle East Big Three carriers are outside the Top-10. Qatar Airways made the 29th spot in track keeping violations and 35th in continuous descent approach violations.

Emirates, on the other hand, made the 11th overall spot with 881 points.

The Dubai-based giant sometimes brings up to six Airbus A380s per day into LHR—one of the most silent aircraft in the industry.

However, it made the 16th spot in noise quota per seat, mainly because some of its flights operate between late night or early morning hours.

The worst 10 airlines, other than EgyptAir, are Kuwait Airways (49), Turkish Airlines [short haul] (48), El Al (47), Pakistan International Airlines (46), Turkish Airlines [long haul] (45), Korean Air (44), DHL (43), China Southern (42), Air China (41), and Gulf Air (40) complete the list.

Last year, El Al occupied the last spot, scoring 362 points.

This year, however, the Tel Aviv-based carrier scored 528, occupying the 47th place—a three-spot improvement.

In January, LHR announced that environmental charges over airlines increased 7%, starting from January 1, 2018.

The airport expects to reduce the impact on local communities by making it cleaner and quieter with the restructured environmental charge, encouraging airlines to deploy its newest aircraft on LHR-bound routes.

This is the best way to cut emissions and shrink the noise footprint around the airport.

It is a tangible step that will make a real difference to local communities, said John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow CEO.

The new environmental charge forms part of Heathrow’s sustainability strategy called Heathrow 2.0. The airport’s goal is to reach at least a 50% of its passengers to travel in “sustainable transport” by 2030.

This quarterly list is, therefore, a clever way of showing which airlines comply with the airport’s regulations.

By 2025, Heathrow 2.0, will establish an airside ultra-low emission zone, to improve quality of life of local communities through cleaner air.

Heathrow has also been recognized as the Best Airport in Western Europe and for the 9th year in a row, Best Airport for Shopping.

This achievement follows what has been a successful year for the airport, carrying 78 million passengers annually.

The 82% of passengers surveyed in 2017 rated their experience traveling through Heathrow as Excellent or Very Good.

On top of this, Heathrow recorded a personal best in improving flight punctuality with 80.2% of flights departing within 15 minutes of their scheduled departures.


Tourism Observer

CUBA: 9 Million Tourists, But Is Cuba Ready?

A year after restoring diplomatic relations, the U.S. and Cuba are on the verge of an agreement to resume regularly scheduled commercial flights between the two nations.

U.S airlines say they are ready.But is Cuba?

More than 100,000 U.S. visitors have been to Cuba in the year since the Obama administration announced it was restoring diplomatic ties with the island nation – all of them still on charters. Commercial airline service might be imminent but the amount of U.S. tourists it will bring to Cuba could overwhelm an infrastructure that might not be ready for an increase in numbers.

From an airline standpoint, American, United, Southwest and JetBlue have all said they are not only interested in starting service to Cuba, but ready to go. Fortunately, this is the one place where Cuba is the strongest.

Because Cuba has been off the radar – almost literally – of people in the United States for two generations, the general tourist thinks of Havana and Jose Marti International Airport as the only place to fly into. But Cuba actually has 10 airports scattered throughout the country servicing flights from 32 airlines including such major carriers as Air France, Air Canada, Aeromexico, and Virgin Atlantic.

The facilities are older, but certainly not decrepit, having served some of the world’s biggest carriers for decades.

Hotels could be an issue in the near-term, although it is likely American companies will become more involved once the trade embargo with Cuba is lifted. For the moment, however, it is less about quality than quantity. According to Cuban officials, there are 63,000 hotel rooms in Cuba, almost 70 percent of which are four- and five-star properties. By some estimates, capacity will increase to 85,000 rooms by 2020.

Will it be enough for an expected increase to 9 million tourists by then from the current 3 million or so tourists annually? That remains to be seen. By comparison’s sake, Las Vegas has 124,000 hotels rooms and draws 41 million tourists a year. Yet travel experts say there are big differences between Havana and Las Vegas.

“It’s a big problem,” Omar Everleny, an economist at the Centre for the Study of the Cuban Economy, told the Toronto Globe and Mail. “Havana is 100 percent full.”

Cruise ships already regularly visit Cuba … but there are issues. Havana’s docks cannot handle the 3,000- and 4,000-passenger superships. Investments will need to be made there.

There’s also the question of currency. It has been less than a month since the first U.S. debit card was approved for use when MasterCard and Fort Lauderdale-based Stonegate Bank announced an agreement. MasterCard can be used now at more than 10,000 locations in Cuba; Stonegate guarantees the payment.

But few other U.S.-based companies are willing to make the same commitment until the Obama administration lifts the economic trade embargo with Cuba.