A US district court judge has ruled in favour of the government's 2021 lawsuit against the American Airlines' and JetBlue's 2020 "Northeast Alliance" (NEA).
Leo Sorokin's judgement in favour of the Department of Justice and the Biden administration, which called the alliance a "de facto merger", gives the two carriers 30 days to go their separate ways.
“It is abundantly clear to the Court that the defendants’ primary motivation in establishing the NEA was to strengthen their own competitive positions against Delta (and, to a lesser extent, United) in Boston and New York,” Sorokin wrote, citing American's status as the world's biggest airline and JetBlue's as the the sixth biggest in the US.
The judge said the alliance "substantially diminishes competition in the domestic market for air travel" and amounted to a breach of the Sherman Act, the US' anti-trust code.
The carriers said they were "disappointed" with the ruling, which American described as "plainly incorrect" in its legal analysis.
"We are studying the judgment in full and evaluating our next steps as part of the legal process", JetBlue wrote in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). American wrote in a subsequent May 22 SEC filing that it “believes the ruling is wrongly decided and is currently considering its next steps in this litigation”.
But Merrick Garland, the US Attorney General, said the court's decision was "a win for Americans who rely on competition between airlines to travel affordably."
The ruling came ahead of October hearings regarding the government's attempt to block JetBlue's proposed merger with Spirit Airlines.