US DOT denies antitrust immunity for Hawaiian-JAL tie-up

In its final order, the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) has tentatively approved the proposed alliance between Hawaiian Airlines (HA, Honolulu) and JAL - Japan Airlines (JL, Tokyo Haneda) but, at the same time, has denied the two carriers' request for antitrust immunity.

In the order, the DOT argues that the applicants had not "met the statutory and policy standards necessary to obtain a grant of antitrust immunity and that the airline partners could proceed readily without a grant of antitrust immunity."

Following an initial October 2019 show-cause order which blocked their bid for antitrust immunity, JAL and Hawaiian changed the proposed scope of their joint venture - its geographical scope in particular which was changed to include direct flights from Hawaii to ten Asian countries (as opposed to just connecting traffic via Japan) and added India and Russia as destination markets. They also included the Tokyo-Guam International market as well as new JAL owned low-cost carrier ZIPAIR (ZG, Tokyo Narita).

Given the carriers had not "demonstrated how the JV would function in terms of revenue sharing, pricing and marketing", the DOT said it could not grant antitrust immunity "at this time."

Hawaiian switched its Japanese partner back in March 2018 replacing a partnership with ANA - All Nippon Airways (NH, Tokyo Haneda) with JAL.

Combined, Hawaiian and JAL offer approximately 47% of all seats from Hawaii to Asia in the week starting March 16 with JAL coincidently offering exactly two more seats that its US partner. ANA - All Nippon Airways (NH, Tokyo Haneda) is in third place with just 19.25% market share by capacity. JAL and Hawaiian codeshare on all services between Japan and Hawaii. Also, the Japanese operator codeshares on domestic services within Hawaii. Hawaiian itself codeshares on a much more significant part of JAL's network, including domestic services within Japan and international flights to Guam, Hong Kong International, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore Changi, South Korea, Taiwan, and Viet Nam.