Regulación joint business lineas aereas

TRANSATLANTIC AIRLINE ALLIANCES: COMPETITIVE  ISSUES AND REGULATORY APPROACHES 

A report by the European Commission  and the United States Department of Transportation    16 November 2010

Notes and Acknowledgements 

Annex 2 of the EU-U.S. Air Transport Agreement, provisionally applied as of March 2008, provides the legal basis for cooperation with respect to competition issues in theair transport industry between the European Commission and the United States Department of Transportation.

In the spirit of Annex 2, this report was prepared jointly by the staffs of the European Commission and the United States Department of Transportation. It does not take any position that would bind the EU and the European Commission, and the United States and the United States Department ofTransportation, and is for informational purposes only.

Many professionals working in the airline industry volunteered their time to meet with the United States Department of Transportation and the European Commission staffs during this project. While this joint report was not coordinated with those individuals, their expertise and participation were critical to the success of this learningexercise.

Introduction 

1. The primary goal of this joint research project is to foster a common understanding of the transatlantic airline industry among United States Department of Transportation (further in the text “DOT”) and European Commission (further in the text “the Commission”)1 staffs as a basis upon which to build compatible regulatory approaches to competition issues in theairline sector. Perhaps the most fundamental conclusion of our inquiry is the remarkable similarities between the current competitive structures of the airline industries in Europe and the United States and, even more importantly, the remarkable similarities in the trends that continue to shape them, despite significant differences in their historical development. 2. The project related only topassenger transport. It was carried out in two phases. The first “qualitative” phase included individual meetings with EU and U.S. carriers. The carriers were selected in a representative way to include both allied and non-allied carriers. In the course of this phase, both authorities also met with representatives of the global aviation alliances. In order to enable an unconstrained and open exchange ofviews, the detailed content of the meetings is confidential. However, DOT and the Commission informed the carriers of their intention to publish this joint report summarising the main findings. 3. The second phase of the project – a “quantitative” phase – was an econometric assessment of the Passenger Origin-Destination (“O&D”) Survey data collected by DOT.2 DOT has legal constraints on disclosureof some of the data. In order to be able to use the data for the project, the Commission was therefore obliged to obtain waivers from the carriers. Those waivers limit the use that can be made of the data and any results derived from it by the Commission exclusively to this project. The assessment was outsourced to an external consultant.3 The results of the quantitative assessment helped bothauthorities to better understand the likely effects on price and capacity resulting from various forms of cooperation in transatlantic markets. 4. Finally, DOT and the Commission also conducted a detailed review of the most prominent academic papers which set out a theoretical framework for the examination of the effects of airline alliances. 5. This report summarises the main qualitative findings ofthe joint research project. It does not divulge any confidential information obtained from carriers in the meetings, nor does it reveal any findings derived from the DOT O&D Survey data, concomitant with the text of the waivers granting the Commission access. 6. The report is structured as follows. First, as background, it describes how the EU and U.S. aviation industries evolved over time,...