When the airline industry took a nose dive a decade ago, executives at global carriers scrambled to find a quick fix to avoid financial ruin. What they came up with, according to federal prosecutors, was a massive price-fixing scheme among airlines that artificially inflated passenger and cargo fuel surcharges between 2000 and 2006 to make up for lost profits.
The airlines' crimes cost US consumers and businesses mostly international passengers and cargo shippers hundreds of millions of dollars, prosecutors say. But the airlines caught by the Justice Department have paid a hefty price in the five years since the government's widespread investigation became public.
To date, 19 executives have been charged with wrongdoing four have gone to prison and 21 airlines have coughed up more than $1.7 billion in fines in one of the largest criminal antitrust investigations in US history.
The court cases reveal a complex web of schemes between mostly international carriers willing to fix fees in lockstep with competitors for flights to and from the United States. Convicted airlines include British Airways, Korean Air, and Air France-KLM. No major US carriers have been charged.
The price-fixing unraveled largely because two airlines decided to come clean and turn in their co-conspirators. In late 2005, officials with German-based Lufthansa notified the Justice Department that the airline had been conspiring to set cargo surcharges. By Valentine's Day 2006, FBI agents and their counterparts in Europe made the investigation public by raiding airline offices. After those raids, British-based Virgin Atlantic came forward about its role in a similar scheme to set fuel surcharges for passengers.
Investigators eventually found a detailed paper trail laying out agreements, stretching back to 2000, to set passenger and cargo fuel surcharges The probe expanded to airlines doing business between the US and Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia.
The Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic mea culpas allowed them to take advantage of a Justice Department leniency program because they helped crack the conspiracies. Airlines and executives who didn't come forward were charged with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act.