We are warming to the idea of changing the law to permit airlines of any country to merge with airlines of any other country.
We arrive at this position because international airline joint ventures, the next best things to mergers, are getting so complicated they're making our heads spin.
Pay attention, because this gets weird.
As we recently reported, Delta is seeking antitrust immunity to create a joint venture with Virgin Atlantic to fix prices and capacity in U.S.-U.K. markets, including traffic from Delta hubs like Detroit to U.K. points beyond Heathrow, such as Aberdeen, Scotland.
But there's a problem. Delta already has antitrust immunity to fix prices and capacity with joint venture partners Air France/KLM and Alitalia on all U.S.-Europe traffic, and some of that traffic moves between Detroit and Aberdeen via Amsterdam. This would put Delta in the position of having a routing to Aberdeen with one joint venture partner, and a competing routing to Aberdeen with a different joint venture partner.
It appears that Delta can't abide the prospect of its new joint venture competing against its old joint venture, so it is seeking additional antitrust immunity that would enable the two joint ventures to fix prices in markets such as Detroit-Aberdeen.
In other words, Delta claims to need antitrust immunity to fix prices with itself, so that it doesn't have to compete with itself.
Reach for your favorite headache remedy, and read it again if you must. We are not making this up.
We have another example of the dog-chasing-its-tail in this week's news that Air France/KLM is seeking a transatlantic joint venture with Air Tahiti Nui.
Air France, of course, already has a successful transatlantic joint venture with Delta and Alitalia. In U.S.-Europe markets, they share everything.
But Air France claims to need a separate joint venture with the Tahitian airline, which operates a Papeete-Los Angeles-Paris service in competition with Air France.
If Air France has its way, it will have a revenue-pooling venture with Air Tahiti Nui on the Paris-Los Angeles segment, and a regular codeshare on the Los Angeles-Papeete segment. Being a conscientious venture partner, Air France said it would share its portion of the Tahiti joint venture revenue with its existing joint venture partners.
Under this scenario, if Air Tahiti carried a passenger from Paris to Los Angeles and beyond to Papeete, Alitalia would get a piece of the action because Air France would get a piece of the action, and Air France and Alitalia share everything.
Did we say we're not making this up?