EU Competition Law Developments in the Aviation Sector: January to June 2015

The first half of 2015 continues to highlight the continued importance of competition law in the aviation sector. This article summarizes the main competition law developments over the past six months and then provides the reader with greater detail of each of these developments. The European Commission ('Commission') has concluded its third investigation into the global alliance transatlantic cooperation by accepting commitments in the SkyTeam investigation. The Commission has again been requested to review a merger involving Aer Lingus, but this time it is IAG's interest in the airline that was notified to the Commission. With follow-on damages actions continuing to play out in court, there has also been an increase in the number of judgments handed down clarifying specific points of law, particularly surrounding the complainant's request for disclosure. With a non-confidential version of the Commission's airfreight decision (decided in November 2010) still outstanding, complainants' requests for access to the confidential version of the decision (available to parties fined by the Commission) continues to dominate cases before the courts in the UK as well as the Netherlands. In April 2015, two of the UK's competition authorities were merged: The Office for Fair Trading ('OFT') and the Competition Commission ('CC') were merged to form the Competition and Markets Authority ('CMA').