American Airlines and JetBlue filed papers with the US District Court on Friday June 9 to keep certain elements of the Northeast Alliance (NEA), which was ruled on May 19 to be tantamount to an unlawful merger and needed to be dissolved within 30 days.
In a response to the Department of Justice (DOJ) injunction, JetBlue and American claim in the filing that the proposed final judgement “drastically overreaches” since it seeks to invalidate frequent flyer and codeshare arrangement, and proposes an “extraordinary compliance regime” that the airlines believe is “vastly disproportionate” to the evidence in the case. The airlines add that the judgement proposes “onerous notice requirements” that demand the airlines receive advance approval of common interline agreements to accommodate passengers during flight cancellations and the requirement for a monitoring trustee over five years that the airline say is “for a longer term than those in criminal cases”. All revenue sharing between any air carrier is also to be outlawed, which the airlines state is commonplace in the industry and as such unenforceable in this case.
The airline say that the injunction should be “limited to the provisions of the NEA”, which means that the two airline should be allowed to continue codesharing and reciprocal frequent flyer recognition, and that the proposed monitoring requirements be lifted or reduced, and that importantly the airlines’ should be allowed to use their own winding down agreement already in place that would minimise customer harm.
Finally, the airlines asked that the 30-day effective date is delayed to give time to rule on the challenge and also to provide time for any appeal process. American Airlines chief executive Robert Isom confirmed that the airline would be filing an appeal, while JetBlue has not yet confirmed its next course of action.
On Monday June 12, US District Judge Leo Sorokin confirmed that the injunction will take effect 21 days after the court issues a final judgment and permanent injunction, providing the airlines will time to appeal the ruling and/or unwind the alliance.