Two former heads of the national competition watchdog say the federal government's move to block Qatar Airways' request for extra flights to protect Qantas decreases competition and leaves travellers worse off.
"But in this case, they're particularly damaging to the second airline in Australia ... because Virgin Australia don't have big international routes, they do mainly domestic, and the codeshare with Qatar is quite important to them, they get a lot of the flow-on traffic from international visitors and residents going out of Australia.
On Tuesday, Mr Turner told The World Today he was under the impression that someone above Transport Minster Catherine King made a "captain's call" to reject the application, "presumably the prime minister". It says there have been a large number of infringement notices and enforceable undertakings issued by the ACCC over the last 30 years in the airline industry, "which is famously dominated by a small number of companies," relative to the number of firms in the industry.
Industries with the highest levels of concentration tend to have a higher number of consumer-related infringements issued by regulators.
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