The Competition Authority announced on Wednesday that it had sanctioned the airlines Air Caraibes and Air Antilles to the tune of 14.5 million euros in total for agreeing on the prices of their short-haul routes.
(AFP / GUILLAUME SOUVANT)
It was Air Caraibes (Dubreuil group) which was the most heavily sanctioned (13 million euros), for these facts dating back to the period 2015-2019, the Authority specified in a press release, also revealing a sanction of 1 .5 million euros against K Finance, parent company of Air Antilles at the time via the CAIRE group and Guyane Aéroinvest.
The consulting company Miles Plus (Aerogestion) was fined 70,000 euros in the same case.
According to the Authority, “the companies involved implemented three agreements on prices and pricing conditions for inter-island air connections within the French and international Caribbean” between 2015 and 2019.
Specifically, these were the connections between “Pointe-à-Pitre and Fort-de-France, as well as those between each of these two cities and Saint-Martin, Saint-Lucia and Saint-Domingue,” she said. underlines.
“Between February and June 2015, then again in September and December 2016, Air Antilles and Air Caraibes, with the support of Aérogestion, discussed their future pricing intentions and made reciprocal commitments on the pricing conditions of airline tickets. plane”, according to the same source.
“Then, between April 2017 and December 2019, the companies involved participated in a third agreement on fixing prices and pricing conditions”, which led “from the 2017-18 winter season, to the implementation in place of common price scales leading to a very significant increase in prices”, all within the framework of a “non-aggression agreement”.
“The anti-competitive practices put in place by Air Antilles and Air Caraibes are particularly serious,” ruled the Competition Authority, noting that “air connections represent an essential mode of travel in this region and where they were the only ones to operate on them at the material time”.
“Air Caraibes takes note of the decision of the Competition Authority published today and which relates to old facts concerning only the West Indian regional network,” reacted the company in a press release sent to AFP.
“We are analyzing this decision with our advice in order to consider possible follow-ups,” added the carrier, which also operates long-haul flights with the metropolis.
