Airline collusion suspected of keeping ticket prices high

The U.S. government is investigating four major airlines for colluding to limit available seats to keep prices high.

On Tuesday, American, Delta, Southwest, and United airlines received letters from the Justice Department demanding copies of all communications between the companies.

The Justice Department claims the airlines have been sharing information on seat availability and route schedules to fix prices. The companies have been engaging in “unlawful coordination,” Justice Department spokesperson Emily Pierce said, including signaling each other illegally when they add new flights, routes, and seats.

Airlines publicly met early last month in Miami at the International Air Transport Association’s annual meeting. Afterward, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., requested the Justice Department investigation “to save consumers from the onslaught of price increases in summer fares that may result from collusive and anticompetitive airline company misconduct.”

Airline companies saved billions this year due to cheaper jet fuel, but tickets remained the same cost. Consumers who checked Expedia or Priceline for tickets did not see prices drop with the 37 percent cut in oil prices.

Instead, mergers between major airline companies might have caused price setting and illegal information sharing to occur. The four airlines being investigated comprise 80 percent of all domestic air travel.

Their large market share led to record profits reported in the latest quarter. The average domestic airfare rose an inflation-adjusted 13 percent from 2009 to 2014, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. And that doesn’t include the billions of dollars airlines collected from new fees. During the past 12 months, the airlines took in $3.6 billion in bag fees and $3 billion in reservation-change fees. In the past two years, U.S. airlines earned a combined $19.7 billion.

Airlines contend that the profits resulted from “a robust and competitive marketplace in which capacity has been added and average fares have decreased,” a spokesperson for American Airlines said. Those profits led industry analysts to call for an antitrust investigation to break up the corporations.

The Associated Press contributed to this report