American Airlines loses appeal of ruling barring JetBlue alliance

A U.S. appeals court rejected on Friday a bid by American Airlines to overturn a judge’s decision that sided with the U.S. Department of Justice and declared that its now-scrapped U.S. Northeast partnership with JetBlue Airways was anticompetitive. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the lower-court judge that the airlines’ Northeast Alliance joint venture that allowed the two carriers to coordinate flights and pool revenue violated federal antitrust law. American Airlines and JetBlue did not immediately respond to requests for comment. U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin sided in May 2023 with the Justice Department and six states in a lawsuit challenging the joint venture that American and JetBlue entered into in 2020. Through their partnership, American, the nation’s largest airline, and JetBlue, the sixth-largest, joined forces for flights in and out of New York City and Boston, coordinating schedules and pooling revenue. Following Sorokin’s ruling, JetBlue terminated the alliance, as it unsuccessfully sought to bolster its efforts to win approval for its now-dropped $3.8-billion purchase of Spirit Airlines, which the Justice Department also challenged. American Airlines, though, pressed ahead with an appeal, saying the ruling would prevent the company from entering into any similar future arrangement for 10 years, including with JetBlue.