Are airlines unfairly conniving to keep capacity low and thus drive up fares? According to Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, they are—and he’s asked the Justice Department to investigate.

Unfortunately for airlines and their passengers, Blumenthal has succumbed to a particular Washington, D.C., affliction: thinking he can run a business better than the people actually running it. If they had their druthers, Elizabeth Warren would moonlight as a banker, Joe Barton as a college sports administrator, Jay Rockefeller as an oil company executive, and Hank Johnson as a geographer.

Based on a New York Times report on an airline industry meeting, Blumenthal is concerned that “many of these [airlines] publicly discussed their strategies to remain ‘disciplined’ in their decisions to manage capacity across their flight routes.” Continue reading “Senator Wants to Play Airline Executive”

You might be forgiven for mistaking the pending privatization of Alitalia for the plot of a new romantic comedy–say, My Big Fat Italian Wedding. All the elements are there: the clumsy, unattractive bride to be, the parents desperate to marry her off to any suitor who can come up with a suitable dowry, the relatives anxious to make sure the dowry is large enough, the handful of frustrated suitors and the doddering grandfather who won’t let the bride marry a handsome foreigner.

Last week, Alitalia’s unions failed to come to terms with a bid for the airline by Air France–KLM. The $1.17 billion bid had been approved by Alitalia’s board and the Italian government. After weeks of negotiation and many concessions, Air France–KLM gave up and withdrew its bid. Stirring in trouble was former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who decried the notion of “giving our national airline to the French.” Continue reading “My Big Fat Airline Merger”

Merger mania has struck the airlines once again. A year after US Airways failed to buy Delta Air Lines in a hostile takeover (then, pundits heralded the long-awaited industry consolidation), the buzz is back.

Not long ago, a hedge fund with stakes in both Delta and United Airlines spun a rumor about a merger, causing the stock price to soar. Now, Delta’s board has decided to examine mergers with other airlines, principally United and Northwest Airlines. Northwest’s CEO announced that merger proposals would be weighed carefully, and United has made no secret of its desire in recent months to merge with another airline. And now may be just the right time to merge, thanks to a provision in the 2007 appropriations act requiring “fair and equitable” handling of labor issues during a merger. Continue reading “Congress Fuels Airline Merger Madness”

On August 3, New York governor Eliot Spitzer signed a “bill of rights” for air travelers in New York state. The law provides that passengers who have boarded a plane but have been delayed from takeoff for three hours or more must have access to “amenities” like fresh air, power, lavatories, food, and water. The law also sets up an official “Airline Consumer Advocate” to handle complaints. Penalties for failing to provide these services can be steep: up to $1,000 per passenger.

This comes on the heels of a woeful summer, spring, and winter of airport delays and passengers trapped on immobile planes, most notoriously JetBlue’s February fiasco at John F. Kennedy International Airport, which saw passengers stuck in planes for up to eleven hours. Continue reading “Wrong of Way”