American & Qantas Reassessing Transpacific Routes After DOT Ruling

I think you are right, they are doing the bureaucratic equivalent of Hanging up and calling back.

Qantas already come nttoks 60% of the traffic between the US and Australia. There is no other market in the world where any one single airline has that much control of a market. How is it in the consumer's best interest to give QF even more control?

How does a joint venture that controls 50%+ share of the air traffic in a market benefit consumers, Lucky?

If anti trust immunity were so critical to AA launching syd and akl and for QF to go to SFO, then the carriers should have waited to get ati prior to making these changes. Their actions undermined their argument.

Joint ventures do make sense. American and British Airways between the East Coast and London. That operates as more or less a shuttle service, and every couple of hours a flight leaves from either the east coast or from London. The same with Delta and Virgin Atlantic/Air France,KLM, and Alitalia.

However, there's no reason to give additional market share to the airline which controls more than 50% of the capacity between the United States and Australia.

@Jason not quite true... Air NZ has a pretty good market share in their home market.

And there is nothing stopping Delta and United launching additional flights in the SW pacific. Delta also has a willing partner and local feed. Up until the AA/US tie-up they were the largest carrier in the world were they not?

Agreed that QF / AA should have waited for approval before launching the flights... but can you really run a business and wait 15months.

QF/AA have the market share down here due to largely disinterested competitors (look at the metal United was sending down here until recently).

The reality is, the AUS to US market is significantly more competitive today than it was 10 odd years ago when it was a QF/UA duopoly. Apart from more non stop options, there are numerous one stop options.

This was a great move. Although we dont want gov't controlling businesses, they are there to protect consumers against monopolies. They failed big time with all the mergers. IF American and Qantas joint venture was allowed they would potentially be able to control over 50% of the business going form the West Coast to AUS/NZ. that is NOT good for consumers! Having an extra competitor in there on a very popular route with only 4 competitors probably make a 20-30% impact on fares. AA/QF were clearly trying to control price and margin.

Have no fear, after January 20, President Tang Stain will fix it and make America(n) Great Again

So what if they controlled over 50% of the market?

With or without the control, United is not going to launch LAX-AKL, Delta is not going to launch DFW-MEL, and American was not going to launch SFO-SYD.

This is a really stupid move on the DOT's part. The UA-NZ JV is powerful and the DL-VA JV permits Delta and Virgin to expand as they please in the transpacific and trans-tasman space, except for the fact that neither has chosen to do anything about it other than re-shuffle the deck and reinstate LAX-MEL.

Ben,

Why do you think anti-trust immunity is actually in consumers’ best interests? Can you please furnish with some examples?

I'm struggling to understand how not competing on price is a good thing.

I'm writing the emil from SYD, after having flown from LAX to AKL on AA, then AKL to SYD on QF, and will leave Friday on AA back to LAX. I've benefited from this arrangement by securing a very cheap coach fare that I upgraded to Business Class with AA miles. In other words, I flew AA on a flight to AKL that would not have existed, and received benefits with the QF flight. Who knows if AA would even be flying to Australia at all benefiting a US carrier and the public. More flights and designations helps everyone.