ACCC grants conditional authorisation to Qantas and China Eastern to coordinate operations

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) granted (21-Aug-2015) conditional authorisation to Qantas Airways and China Eastern Airlines to coordinate their operations between Australia and China pursuant to a Joint Coordination Agreement. The conditional approval requires both carriers to maintain at least an aggregate base level of capacity between Shanghai and Australia, and at least their current level of capacity on Sydney-Shanghai. The carriers are also required to grow Shanghai-Australia capacity over the term of the authorisation by a compound annual growth rate of 4%, and must provide specific data to the ACCC including capacity, passengers and fare data to assess the extent to which the public benefit claims are realised. The authorisation is valid until 31-Oct-2020. As previously reported by CAPA, ACCC initially proposed to deny authorisation for the JCA in a 24-Mar-2015 draft determination. [more - original PR]