Virgin Atlantic accused of price fixing

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic airline on Thursday night moved to defend its reputation after Britain’s competition watchdog accused it for the second time of conspiring with a rival to fix prices charged to passengers. The Office of Fair Trading claimed that employees of Cathay Pacific Airways and Virgin exchanged commercially sensitive information between 2002 and 2006 with the aim of co-ordinating ticket prices on the busy London-Hong Kong route. The OFT’s case comes after Virgin admitted involvement in a separate cartel that led the watchdog to impose its biggest ever corporate fine on British Airways and to prosecute four of BA’s past and present executives in a criminal trial due to start next week. More…

News selected by Covalence | Country: UK | Company — Ethical Quote link: Virgin Atlantic | Source: Financial Times