The International Air Cargo Cartel

This case study reviews the history and operation of the international air cargo cartel, in which over 20 airlines around the world colluded on the setting and implementation of fuel and other surcharges for international air cargo services from late 1999 to 2006. To an economist, this cartel has several interesting features, including the choice of a simple variable to collude on, the use of a fuel price index as a facilitating device, and the reliance on a complex web of contacts among the executives of different airlines to enforce the cartel. Most interesting of all is that the airlines colluded on the surcharges without coordinating on the freight rates. On the surface, this cartel seemed to be poorly designed because higher surcharges achieved through collusion could have simply been offset by lower freight rates as the airlines competed for customers. But the theoretical analyses by Chen (2017 and 2022) demonstrate that colluding on surcharges without coordination on base prices could be an effective way of raising the full price of a product.