Questions of fact existed as to whether the Department of Transportation, despite paying lip service to its power to regulate airline rates and discount fares for foreign travel, actually did regulate those rates sufficiently to allow foreign carriers to invoke the filed rate doctrine as a defense to an antitrust suit over alleged collusion and price fixing among the three foreign airline defendants. In addition, the DOT had said it lacked the ability to regulate fuel surcharges on tickets for foreign flights, so the filed rate doctrine did not apply to the claim that those surcharges were fixed by agreement of the three defendants.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Smith, M., J.; Wallace, J., concurring in part & dissenting in part); April 14, 2017; 2017 WL 1363805