The United States Justice Department is giving Britain’s largest airline a break, even as it faces one the largest antitrust fines in years.
Representatives of British Airways are scheduled to plead guilty on Thursday to two counts of conspiracy and face a likely fine of $300-million for colluding with rival Virgin Atlantic over fuel surcharges on international flights.
Federal prosecutors, in court documents filed last week, said the fines could have been as high as nearly $900-million if not for the airline’s cooperation in the investigation.
”As a foreign corporation with headquarters outside the United States, British Airways could have retained highly relevant documents in its foreign offices and refused to cooperate,” prosecutors wrote. ”It chose, however, to assist the United States early in its investigation in a highly significant and useful way.”
Early this month, authorities in London and Washington announced nearly $550-million in combined fines for the airline as part of parallel trans-Atlantic investigations.
Britain’s Office of Fair Trading fined the company $246-million and a US federal judge was expected to sign off on Thursday on the $300-million US fine.
As part of its plea deal, British Airways is admitting that between mid-2004 and early 2006, it colluded with Virgin Atlantic over the surcharges, which were added to fares in response to rising oil prices.
Virgin Atlantic is not named in the Justice Department case and is not expected to face a fine in Britain because it reported the misconduct to authorities.
Between 2004 and 2006, fuel surcharges rose from about $10 to about $120 per ticket for a round-trip long-haul flight on British Airways or Virgin.
The $300-million in criminal fines were the second-largest antitrust sanction by the Justice Department since 1995.
The largest antitrust fine, $500-million, was against Switzerland-based vitamin company F Hoffman-La Roche in a 1999 price-fixing case. — Sapa-AP