High fares: US airline industry becoming an uncompetitive oligopoly

New York

JUST more than two years ago, one of the nation's airline trade organisations called the industry "hypercompetitive" and declared "airfare remains a bargain". At the time, the Justice Department was weighing the competitive implications of a merger between American Airlines and US Airways, around two years after the merger of United and Continental.

Fast-forward to the present. Far from "hypercompetitive," the airline industry is increasingly looking like an uncompetitive oligopoly.