Air New Zealand and PT Garuda Indonesia have won their bid to dismiss action against them in Australia claiming the airlines were part of a global cartel to fix prices in international air freight services.
In the Australian Federal Court, Justice Nye Perram dismissed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission claim against the airlines, the only two to defend the action, accepting their defence that the surcharges interfered with competition in Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia, but not in Australia.
"Because the commission's case was limited [in all but one minor case] to flights from airports outside Australia into airports inside Australia I have concluded that no market in Australia was involved," the judgment said. "Prices may well have been affected in Australia by the conduct but that does not mean the market in which the airlines were competing was located here."
The alleged price-fixing has been the subject of antitrust process worldwide, with big settlements from multi-national airlines in Europe and the US. Some of the alleged agreements appear to have been in place since 2001.
The judge said the commission didn't demonstrate Air New Zealand was involved in collusive practices over fuel surcharges calculated with reference to cargo weight in Singapore.
