The Korea Fair Trade Commission is initiating procedures to transfer monopoly airline routes as a condition for the merger between Korean Air and Asiana Airlines.
On October 21, the Fair Trade Commission announced that the Implementation Supervision Committee, which oversees the fulfillment of corrective measures related to the merger of the two airlines, held a regular meeting at the Korea Fair Trade Mediation Agency the previous day and decided to begin the process of transferring 10 routes.
The routes to be transferred at this stage include four U.S. routes (Incheon-Seattle, Incheon-Honolulu, Incheon-Guam, Busan-Guam), one U.K. route (Incheon-London), one Indonesia route (Incheon-Jakarta), and four domestic routes (Gimpo-Jeju, Gwangju-Jeju, Jeju-Gimpo, Jeju-Gwangju).
Moving forward, the Implementation Supervision Committee will announce applications for alternative airlines, conduct eligibility reviews, and, following evaluations by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's Air Traffic Committee, will allocate the final slots and traffic rights.
The selected alternative airlines are expected to begin operating on the allocated routes as early as the first half of next year.
However, for the Incheon-Honolulu and Incheon-London routes, the U.S. and U.K. competition authorities have already designated Air Premia and Virgin Atlantic, respectively, as alternative airlines, so there may not be a separate announcement for alternative applications on these routes.
In December last year, the Fair Trade Commission approved the merger of the two companies, imposing structural conditions such as transferring airport slots and traffic rights for a total of 34 routes with competition concerns to other airlines.
For now, six routes-Incheon-Los Angeles, Incheon-San Francisco, Incheon-Barcelona, Incheon-Frankfurt, Incheon-Paris, and Incheon-Rome-have already been allocated to Air Premia, United Airlines, and T'way Air in accordance with measures by U.S. and European Union competition authorities.
The transfer procedures for the remaining 18 routes are also scheduled to proceed sequentially starting from the first half of next year.
A Fair Trade Commission official explained, "Apart from the measures taken by other competition authorities, the procedures are starting first with the larger routes," adding, "The transfers are being staggered, rather than done all at once, to minimize potential shocks to the market."
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
