Flybe Competition Case
Agenda An alleged predation case in aviation Advancing economics in business No-fly zone? A curious case of alleged predation by a new entrant Following the entry of UK airline, Flybe, onto a domestic air route that put it in competition with Air Southwest (ASW), the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) launched an investigation into whether the entry represented an abuse of a dominant position by Flybe. The OFT’s theory of harm was that Flybe might be attempting to eliminate ASW from all routes, thus benefiting Flybe’s other routes operating from a nearby regional airport. After a 17-month investigation, the OFT concluded that Flybe had not breached competition law The 2010 Flybe case contained novel elements that Flybe started operating the Newquay–Gatwick route in make it an important development in competition February 2009, offering three rotations a day, at times policy.1 The alleged ‘predator’, Flybe, was a new similar to the flights provided by ASW, but with one entrant into the market in which predation was alleged fewer rotation in the middle of the day. Flybe offers to have occurred. The ‘victim’ of the predation—and the services to and from a range of destinations across complainant in the case—was ASW, an airline that (on Europe—particularly in the UK, where it was, at the some possible market definitions) had, until a few time, the second-largest domestic airline—and its weeks before launching its complaint, held a monopoly main base in the UK is at Exeter Airport, also in the in the market in which predation was alleged.
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