Aug. 1, 2007, 11:36PM
2 airlines say they will plead guilty
Each paying $300 million fine and cooperating in antitrust inquiryBy ROBERT SCHMIDT and JAMES ROWLEY
Bloomberg NewsBritish Airways and Korean Air Lines have agreed to plead guilty to criminal price fixing and will each pay $300 million in fines, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday.
The companies will admit illegally fixing the prices of passenger and cargo flights by increasing fuel surcharges, the government said. Both companies have agreed to cooperate with the department’s antitrust investigation into the air transportation industry, the agency said. The plea agreements are the first arising from the probe….
This sort of comes under the heading of, aha, exactly as I suspected. My hat is off to the US Justice department and the other, un-named European agencies who cooperated in catching these crooks. The article goes on to opine that there may be more airlines implicated … which also won’t surprise me, since I’ve long been under the impressions that airline prices just go up and down :in concert” way too often to be explained by simple free market forces.
One of the things I have seen, living in Asia all these years, is how cheap air fares can actually be. The Philippine airlines frequently have fares that seem outrageously low compared to what other carriers charge. Tiger Air (part of the Qantas corporate structure) also has fares that are very, very cheap compared to what “name brand” carriers charge. Could it be these “little guys” are just giving the air travel away? or could it be that the “majors” are systematically getting together and ripping us off.
From their guilty pleas it ow appears the “rip off” scenario is the most likely answer.
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Sir,
Good Day!
Thank you for your inspiring advises! Of course definitely, I love to stay here in the Philippines! A foreign man, in a foreign country but with Pinoy’s passion and a big heart! I salute you sir!
GodBless!
Ms. Loida
Thanks for the kind words, Loida. I notice you have abog … keep at it. it’s very interesting to me to hear from the folks I see everyday … like all the nice people who help me at the Hypermarket.
many of my Filpino friends won’t blog becuase they don’t think people will read what they write … or else they think a blog has to be about politics or “large ideas” … and thus the world is deprived of all that they could teach us.
You might like to visit my wife’s blog at: http://www.unofficialcook.com and see what use she puts those Hypermarket groceries to
Be well, Dave
Note acorrection … I erroneously attrubuted Tiger Air to the QANTAS family … my bad. Tiger’s major airline backing comes from Singapore Airlines … one of their competitors, Jetstar are backed by QANTAS … sorry.