Two airline passengers filed a proposed class-action lawsuit this week accusing seven major carriers and a pair of data companies of secretly trading fare information to keep ticket prices artificially high. The suit, filed in federal court in Washington on Wednesday, names American, Delta, United, Southwest, Alaska, Hawaiian and JetBlue as defendants, along with pricing data firm ATPCO and its subsidiary 3Victors.
Plaintiffs Ashley Ward and Gregory Morris allege they paid inflated fares because of the airlines' conduct, according to The Seattle Times. The lawsuit accuses the companies of conspiring to exchange confidential pricing information in violation of federal antitrust law, according to Courthouse News Service. The case was filed Wednesday in Washington federal court, as reported by Law360, and the law firm representing the plaintiffs, Hagens Berman, identifies the matter as Ward et al. v. Airline Tariff Publishing Company et al. in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
A Give-To-Get Data Pipeline
At the center of the complaint are two tools built by 3Victors: Iris, described as an airline shopping and pricing data aggregator, and PriceEye, an analytics tool that lets airlines monitor competitors' fares and pricing changes, per Courthouse News. The plaintiffs say airlines contribute shopping data and dynamically generated prices to Iris in exchange for access to PriceEye, operating on what the suit describes as a give-to-get model where, in the plaintiffs' words, “the more you contribute, the more you receive.”
The complaint alleges that the defendants exchanged confidential pricing information. The system allows airlines to monitor competitors' fares in near real time. The plaintiffs seek to represent domestic airline ticket purchasers and are asking the court to block the information-sharing arrangement and award damages, per Courthouse News.
Echoes Of A 1990s Antitrust Fight
This isn't the first time the fare-sharing system run by ATPCO has drawn federal scrutiny. The U.S. Department of Justice sued ATPCO and eight major airlines in 1992, alleging they used the system to communicate with one another about fares, according to Hagens Berman. Two years later, six major airlines agreed to changes to a price-information system that, per a U.S. Department of Justice announcement from that era, had been used to increase ticket costs by perhaps more than a billion dollars between 1988 and 1992.
Hagens Berman says the earlier consent decrees expired in 2003 and 2004. The earlier restrictions required fares in the system to be immediately available for consumer purchase and restricted future-pricing signals.
From Static Fares To Dynamic Pricing
The historical Airline Tariff Publishing Co. (ATP) was headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, and its system was airline-owned. ATPCO has worked with major carriers for decades. The company formed a working group in 2016 to study dynamic pricing, the practice of offering nonpublic discounts tailored to specific travelers, according to Courthouse News. Traditional fare-data sharing had discouraged airlines from offering deep discounts because rivals could easily match the prices.
Accounts also diverge on the timeline of ATPCO's 3Victors acquisition. Courthouse News reports that ATPCO announced a program in 2023 allowing airlines to analyze collective shopping data and acquired 3Victors later that year; an ATPCO press release dated December 5, 2023, also announced the acquisition. ATPCO has said 3Victors operates as its subsidiary and that the terms of the deal remain private. The company has described the acquisition as supporting a shift from traditional static fare filing toward dynamic offer creation, and said the 3Victors platform would provide real-time industry travel-demand information while supplementing fares not currently filed through ATPCO.
Fares Climbing As Case Moves Forward
The lawsuit comes amid elevated ticket prices. Airlines have attributed elevated ticket prices to skyrocketing jet-fuel costs amid the Iran war, and executives have said high prices were likely to persist, even as carriers work to recover from a costly year and increasingly cater to passengers willing to pay more for premium experiences, per the Seattle Times' reporting.
American Airlines is among the defendants. Most of the other named airlines declined to comment or could not be reached regarding the pending litigation, and ATPCO likewise could not be reached for comment during the week the suit was filed. The proposed class action seeks to represent domestic airline ticket purchasers, and the complaint names Delta and Hawaiian among the airlines sued.
