American Airlines’ partnership with JetBlue violates antitrust laws, a Massachusetts judge ruled Friday in a win for the Justice Department, according to a report.
The two airlines were able to coordinate schedules and routes in the Northeast U.S. under the partnership, CNBC reported.
The DOJ filed a lawsuit in 2021 that claimed the partnership is effectively a merger and would raise prices for passengers.
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“Whatever the benefits to American and JetBlue of becoming more powerful—in the northeast generally or in their shared rivalry with Delta—such benefits arise from a naked agreement not to compete with one another,” U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin wrote in a ruling. “Such a pact is just the sort of ‘unreasonable restraint on trade’ the Sherman Act was designed to prevent.”
