Kirkhope welcomes EC's airline investigations
Posted, April 20, 2009 @ 16:00
Balance between cooperation and collusion should be probed
Brussels, 20th April 2009 -- Cooperation between airlines can be beneficial to the consumer but it must never be allowed to develop into anti-competitive collusion, Timothy Kirkhope MEP, Conservative leader in the European Parliament, said today after the commission launched a competition probe into seven airlines.
One probe is between the Star Alliance members Air Canada, Lufthansa, Continental and United Airlines. The other is into One World's American airlines, British Airways and Iberia.
A new 'Open Skies' deal between the EU and the USA, which came into force in 2008, gave American airlines access to the internal European market, whilst only allowing European airlines to fly from any EU airport into the US (rather than the airport of their home member state). Mr Kirkhope has argued that this one-sided deal has already distorted the marketplace for transatlantic travel and if the commission truly wants to liberalise the sector, it should ensure that reciprocal arrangements are central to Open Skies II, on which negotiations are currently underway.
Mr Kirkhope also recently drafted a new code of conduct for Computerised Reservation Systems (CRS) - the system many high street and online travel agents use to make around half of all of airline bookings. The code was intended to end the situation where airlines who have shares in the CRS could force travel agents to favour their own distribution system - situations exist where a number of airlines have joint holdings in the CRS operators.
Mr Kirkhope said:
"Cooperation between airlines can bring huge benefits to travellers but if it stands in the way of open competition then the consumer will suffer. Competition and cooperation should go hand in hand.
"The marketplace has already been distorted by the Open Skies deal, which gives US carriers full access to our markets whilst blocking our operators out of theirs. While anti-competitive behaviour is never acceptable, we have to ask whether international agreements are themselves encouraging this behaviour."