Hello from bizjournals.com! David Mueller (davidm@smail.info) thought you might like the following article from Pacific Business News: DOT approves Aloha-Hawaiian coordination Prabha Natarajan Pacific Business News ------------------------------------------------------------ Aloha Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines have won federal permission to coordinate their interisland capacity, but have been told they have to report to Washington on what they do. The U.S. Department of Transportation announced Monday it had granted a special antitrust exemption that the Justice Department, Pacific Wings, and American Airlines had opposed in whole or in part. It permits Aloha and Hawaiian, which said they were at financial risk because of lower interisland business, to meet for the purpose of coordinating how much airlift their provide within the state. The federal agency cited continued losses by both airlines in the interisland segment as a reason to approve this. “The agreement will provide the applicants a one-time opportunity to improve the efficiency of their services without causing significant consumer harm, and to help ensure, in the long term, the continuation of competitive service,” the agency release stated. They cannot cannot set fares together. They cannot discuss flights outside the state. DOT imposed an additional requirement. The airlines must send it monthly reports on service changes and fares in the affected interisland markets. “We are adopting this requirement because of our concern with the potential impact of this agreement on consumers and we intend to monitor closely the schedules and fares being offered by each of the carriers in those markets,” the agency release stated. Pacific Wings, a much smaller interisland carrier, and American Airlines, the world's largest airline, objected to this along with the antitrust division of the Justice Department. But American confined its objection to one point. It opposed approval without requiring the parties not to reduce seat availability for connecting interstate traffic. American CEO Don Carty later told Congress that American might request similar authority to work with mainland competitors. Hawaiian and Aloha have lost interisland business in recent years as mainland carriers increase direct flights to neighbor islands. American, for example, recently joined United in offering direct flights from Los Angeles to Kauai. American passengers who might formerly have flown to Honolulu and then transferred to Hawaiian or Aloha need not do so any longer. The agreement will be effective until Oct. 1, 2003. Copyright(c) American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved. You can view this article on the web at: http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2002/09/30/daily15.html