The feds want to know if airlines are price-fixing airfares

Passengers are happy to complain about the price of airline tickets, but the Justice Department may be looking closer into the situation. The Associated Press reports that the feds have asked airlines to hand over information as part of an antitrust investigation into whether the companies colluded to keep airfares artificially high.

A spokesperson told the AP that the department was indeed looking into potential “unlawful coordination” among airlines, but there’s little information beyond that, such as which airlines may have been involved or how far the coordination may have gone.

There aren’t too many stones for the Justice Department to turn over: after years of bankruptcies and mergers, very few major players are left in the flying business. Those survivors, meanwhile, have been suffering from consistently lackluster profits.