BA, American, Iberia to Cede Airport Slots
BA, American and Iberia offer to cede London, New York airport slots to end EU antitrust case
British Airways, American Airlines and Iberia have offered to give away takeoff and landing slots at London and New York airports to soothe European Union antitrust worries, EU regulators said Wednesday.
The European Commission said it would ask other airlines whether freeing up slots at London Heathrow, London Gatwick and New York's John F. Kennedy airports would be enough to create more competition and entice rivals to start new routes from those airports to New York, Boston, Dallas and Miami.
EU spokeswoman Amelia Torres said the offer could see rivals start two extra daily flights each from London to New York and from London to Boston and one more daily service from London to Dallas and from London to Miami.
If rivals are supportive, regulators said they would move to make the three airlines' offer legally binding and drop an antitrust case that could have racked up millions of euros (dollars) in fines.
One rival, Virgin Atlantic, said the airlines' offer was "woefully inadequate in counteracting the anticompetitive harm of a combined BA/AA," claiming that it would hurt consumers by raising prices and destroying competition.
The three airlines currently coordinate how they sell and operate flights between the 27-nation EU and the United States. They now want to expand their oneworld alliance to jointly manage schedules, capacity and pricing on flights from Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Norway and Switzerland as well.
That triggered antitrust investigations in the EU and the U.S. as regulators worried that combining the services into new territories would limit competition and hike fares on lucrative trans-Atlantic routes.
BA, American and Iberia claim that the planned new alliance would reduce fares and give passengers more convenient connections and better access to some 500 destinations.
Virgin said BA and American would have a monopoly or be dominant on some of the busiest and most profitable routes between the U.S. and London Heathrow, where they would control 47 percent of slots.
