Information technology makes it so much easier to communicate nowadays, and so much harder to censor information that it has been commended as being instrumental in the fall of Eastern Bloc dictatorships. Information technology even, it seems, has a new and possibly unethical role to play in the oiling of the wheels of the free market economy. New York Newsday reports that an antitrust lawsuit has been brought against seven US airlines for fixing fares courtesy of the huge data processing capability at Washington’s Airline Tariff Publishing Company. Following the decision by the US Justice Department’s antitrust division to investigate claims that airlines are fixing prices a number of individuals filed suits against the companies. The companies named in the suit are: Northwest Airlines, Continental, Delta, United Airlines, TWA, American Airlines and US Air. The lawsuit claims that airlines set fares together by signalling fare increases and cuts to each other via a computerised database. The database in question is operated by Airline Tariff Publishing, which is in the privileged position of owning one of IBM’s spanking new six-processor ES/9000-720s along with the new MVS/ESA operating system – as well as a 3090-600E. Airlines enter their fare prices into Tariff’s database so that it can pass the prices of all airline fares on to the computer reservation systems used by travel agents and airline reservation agents. However, a spokesman for American Airlines has confirmed that airlines sometimes publicise fare increases by entering them into the database, seeing if rival airlines take them on board by matching them – if they don’t match them then an airline will try a lower price hike or abandon the exercise altogether. The question is, is this a permissible free market activity or does it smack of a price cartel? Although the case could take up to three years to come to trial, its result could have far reaching consequences for the use of information technology in the US, for the lawsuit asks that the network be restructured so as to discourage future collusion among airlines.
