The Justice Department has received a lawsuit to undo American Airlines‘ partnership with JetBlue Airways that allowed the carriers to coordinate routes and schedules in the Northeast U.S.

A federal decide dominated Friday that the airways’ partnership violates antitrust legislation.

The lawsuit, filed in September 2021, alleged that the airways’ alliance was successfully a merger that will damage customers by driving up fares. The trial started a yr later in Boston and wrapped up in December.

Fort Worth, Texas-based American Airlines and New York-based JetBlue Airways argued they wanted the so-called Northeast Alliance to higher compete with different massive carriers Delta Air Lines and United Airlines in congested airports in the area.

“Whatever the advantages to American and JetBlue of changing into extra highly effective—in the northeast typically or in their shared rivalry with Delta—such advantages come up from a unadorned settlement not to compete with each other,” Judge Leo Sorokin wrote in his ruling. “Such a pact is simply the type of ‘unreasonable restraint on commerce’ the Sherman Act was designed to forestall.”

He ordered the airways to finish the partnership 30 days after the ruling. The carriers are seemingly to problem the determination. The airways did not instantly remark.

Undoing the partnership can be troublesome, particularly throughout the peak summer season journey season, which airways have already bought tickets for.

JetBlue and American should not allowed to coordinate fares underneath the partnership, which was accepted in the remaining days of the Trump administration in 2021 and has since expanded.

JetBlue had beforehand warned in a securities submitting {that a} ruling in opposition to the NEA “might have an opposed impression on our enterprise, monetary situation, and outcomes of operations.

“Additionally, we’re incurring prices related to implementing operational and advertising components of the NEA, which might not be recoverable if we had been required to unwind all or a portion of the NEA,” the firm stated.

The Justice Department did not instantly reply to a request for remark.

The division individually in March filed an antitrust lawsuit to block JetBlue’s proposed acquisition of funds service Spirit Airlines, arguing the deal would drive up fares, “harming cost-conscious fliers most acutely.”

The mixture confronted a high hurdle for approval by the Biden administration, which has vowed to take a tough line in opposition to what it views as anticompetitive offers.

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