Did Airlines Collude to Keep Air Fares High?
For months now, oil and gas prices have been dropping—and that includes jet fuel. So why haven’t airline ticket prices dropped as well? That’s one of the questions the Justice Department wants answered as it investigates the possibility of collusion among carriers to keep airfares high.
The DOJ also wants to know if companies conspired to limit the number of available seats in order to drive prices up. Yesterday, the Associated Press broke the news that major U.S. carriers had received a letter demanding copies of all communications the airlines had with each other, Wall Street analysts, and major shareholders about their plans for passenger-carrying capacity, going back to January 2010. The civil antitrust investigation is focusing on whether airlines illegally indicated to each other how quickly they would add new flights, routes, and extra seats in an effort to prop up ticket prices.
Related: 6 Sneaky Fees That Are Making Airlines a Bundle
Just minutes after the news broke, stocks of the major U.S. airlines fell four to five percent, with the S&P 500 airlines index off more than four percent. Until now, the U.S. airline industry had been enjoying record profits, due to increasing numbers of Americans flying and a huge drop in the price of jet fuel. In April, the price of jet fuel was $1.94 per gallon, a decrease of 34 percent from the previous year.
The investigation marks a notable shift for the Justice Department, which approved the merger of American Airlines and US Airways back in November 2013, despite previously blocking it over concerns that the airlines would collude on fares. The probe could signal a more aggressive approach on antitrust enforcement, under the strong leadership of Loretta Lynch, who was confirmed in April.
Justice Department spokesperson Emily Pierce confirmed that the department was investigating potential “unlawful coordination” among some airlines.
Just two weeks ago, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) urged the Justice Department to investigate what he called “anti-competitive, anti-consumer conduct and misuse of market power in the airline industry.”
Related: United Airlines Bullish on First Quarter from Lower Fuel Costs
Since 2008, various mergers have resulted in four major airlines (down from nine)—American, Delta, Southwest, and United—controlling about 80 percent of all domestic air travel. All four airlines have confirmed that they received the letter and that they were cooperating with the investigation.
According to Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the average domestic airfare rose 13 percent from 2009 to 2014 (adjusted for inflation). The average domestic flight last year cost $391. In the past year alone, airlines received an additional $3.6 billion from bag fees and another $3 billion from reservation-change fees. All of the major airlines—American Airlines, United Continental Holdings, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, and Alaska Air Group—posted record profits with a consolidated net income of over $3 billion during the first quarter of 2015.
Chart of the Day: Why US Fertility Rates Are Falling
U.S. fertility rates have fallen to record lows for two straight years. “Because the fertility rate subtly shapes many major issues of the day — including immigration, education, housing, the labor supply, the social safety net and support for working families — there’s a lot of concern about why today’s young adults aren’t having as many children,” Claire Cain Miller explains at The New York Times’ Upshot. “So we asked them.”
Here are some results of the Times’ survey, conducted with Morning Consult. Read the full Times story for more details.
A Record Low 47% of US Adults Say They're 'Extremely Proud' to Be American
Gallup says that, for the first time in the 18 years it’s been asking U.S. adults how proud they are to be Americans, fewer than half say they are "extremely proud." Just 47 percent now say they’re extremely proud, down from 70 percent in 2003.
Another 25 percent say they’re “very proud” — but the combined 72 percent who say they’re extremely or very proud is also the lowest Gallup has recorded. Pride levels among liberals and Democrats have plunged since 2017. Overall, 74 percent of Republicans and just 32 percent of Democrats call themselves “extremely proud” to be American.
Pfizer Has Raised Prices on 100 of Its Products
Weeks after President Trump said that drugmakers were about to implement “voluntary massive drops in prices” — reductions that have yet to materialize — Pfizer has raised prices on 100 of its products, The Financial Times’s David Crow reports:
“The increases were effective as of July 1 and in most cases were more than 9 per cent — well above the rate of inflation in the US, which is running at about 2 per cent. … Pfizer, the largest standalone drugmaker in the US, did decrease the prices of five products by between 16 per cent and 44 per cent, according to the figures.”
Crow notes that Pfizer also raised prices on many of its medicines in January, meaning that some prices have been hiked by nearly 20 percent this year. The drugmaker said that it was only changing prices on 10 percent of its medicines and that list prices did not reflect what most patients or insurers actually paid. The net price increase after rebates and discounts was expected to be in the “low single digits,” the company told the FT.
Chart of the Day: Pass-Through Tax Deductions Made Easy
The Republican tax overhaul was supposed to simplify the tax code, but most experts say it fell well short of the goal. Martin Sullivan, chief economist at Tax Analysts, tweeted out a chart of the analysis required to determine whether income qualifies for the passthrough tax deduction of 20 percent, and as you’ll see, it’s anything but simple.
A Conservative Bashes GOP Dysfunction on Spending Cuts
Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, offers a blistering critique of congressional Republican’s problems cutting spending:
Since the Republicans took the House in 2011, nearly every annual budget blueprint has promised to balance the budget within a decade with anywhere from $5 trillion to $8 trillion in spending cuts. And yet, you may have noticed, the budget has not moved towards balance. This is because the budget merely sets a broad fiscal goal. To actually cut spending, Congress must follow up with specific legislation to reform Medicare, Medicaid, and all the other targeted programs. In reality, most lawmakers who pass these budgets have no intention whatsoever of cutting this spending. As soon as the budget is passed, the targets are forgotten. The spending-cut legislation is never even drafted, much less voted on.
The annual budget exercise is thus a cynical exercise in symbolism. Congress calculates how much spending must be cut over ten years to balance the budget. Then they pass legislation setting a goal of cutting that amount. Then they move on to other business. It’s like a baseball team announcing that they voted to win the next World Series, and then not showing up to play the season.
Read the full piece at National Review.