Major U.S. airlines face lawsuits over alleged price-fixing

Seven major airlines, including American, Delta, United, Southwest, Alaska, Hawaiian, and JetBlue, are facing class action lawsuits alleging they conspired to keep airfares artificially high. The legal actions, filed in federal courts in Washington and Virginia, claim the carriers used a shared database to monitor competitors’ pricing in near real time, thereby discouraging price competition.

At the center of the allegations is the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) and its subsidiary, 3Victors. The plaintiffs allege that the companies operate a “give-to-get” model through two specific products: Iris, a shopping and pricing data aggregator, and PriceEye, an analytics tool. According to the complaints, airlines contribute confidential shopping data and dynamically generated prices to Iris in exchange for access to PriceEye, which provides competitive benchmarks and pricing alerts.

The lawsuits argue that this arrangement undermines the competitive nature of dynamic pricing by allowing airlines to detect and respond to rivals’ discounts almost instantly. This alleged coordination is accused of violating federal antitrust laws and contributing to rising domestic airfares.