# Delta Just Saved Its Aeromexico Joint Venture—Court Ruled DOT Employed A Double Standard > Source: > Published: 2026-08-21 13:44:31+00:00 Delta and Aeromexico just won their court case against the Department of Transportation, with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals [vacating DOT’s order](https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202513546.pdf) breaking up the antitrust-immunized joint venture The two airlines can continue coordinating schedules, pricing and capacity and sharing revenue. There’s no ruling here that the Delta – Aeromexico partnership is good for competition or consumers (it isn’t). However, the court found that DOT had not explained its reasoning for breaking up the arrangement consistently enough to satisfy administrative law. DOT approved the partnership in 2016, requiring the airlines to give up 24 Mexico City slot pairs and four New York JFK slot pairs. The approval had a five-year term, later extended during the pandemic while DOT conducted a new review. The government eventually concluded that conditions in Mexico had changed, moving away from competition. Mexican authorities withdrew slots at Mexico City’s main airport from U.S. airlines, used an opaque process to allocate slots and forced dedicated cargo out to the new airport there. DOT also argued that Delta and Aeromexico had gained too much power, representing nearly 60% of passengers between Mexico City and the United States and 73% of cargo. However, when DOT approved the partnership in 2016, it considered competition between U.S. and Mexico looking at 1,687 city pairs. In withdrawing approval, they focused mostly on Mexico City, which was just 21% of flights. According to the court, they changed how they defined the relevant market without sufficiently explaining why. (One judge concurred in the decision but didn’t link these issues.) Probably the biggest issue was: - DOT says fully implemented Open Skies agreements are “necessary” for airlines to operate an immunized joint venture. - But it allows American Airlines-Japan Airlines and United Airlines-ANA joint ventures without Tokyo Haneda being open, with cargo restricted and U.S. carriers getting just 18 daily slot pairs at the airport (Delta has the largest share, itself a gift from DOT). The agency argued that Japanese authorities were cooperative and conditions had improved, but that doesn’t address the contradiction. Japan may be more competitive than Mexico Cooperation may make Japan better than Mexico, but DOT has moved away from requiring Open Skies compliance – so what’s actually the threshold for ‘open enough’? DOT didn’t really craft a clear standard that allows Haneda but not Mexico City to fit. It’s ironic that Delta’s privileged access to Tokyo Haneda among U.S. airlines becomes the reason Delta also gets to block competition in the U.S. – Mexico market! And Open Skies really was the foundation of joint venture policy. - The federal government inherited authority from the Civil Aeronautics Board to immunize international airline agreements from antitrust law. That power had been used to allow things like price-fixing on international routes by IATA. - After the Supreme Court’s *Copperweld*decision, Northwest Airlines attorney Elliott Seiden and KLM government affairs executive Paul Mifsud developed an application for a joint venture between the two carriers (KLM owned a piece of Northwest, but foreign-ownership laws prevented an actual merger). They reasoned that the airlines should be allowed to act as a single enterprise even though the law prevented them from becoming one. (Delta by the way owns 18.7% of Aeromexico.)Mifsud presented the theory to Don Horn, DOT’s assistant general counsel for international law, who accepted that the department had the legal power to grant immunity. - Meanwhile, officials at Transportation, State and the White House were pursuing Open Skies agreements as a matter of policy, and used joint ventures as a carrot. The U.S. and the Netherlands signed a treaty in September 1992, and Northwest and KLM received antitrust immunity in January 1993. DOT did actually block a partnership between Allegiant and Viva Aerobus. Allegiant did not fly to Mexico. There was no affect on competition. It would have meant more Mexico – U.S. flying not less, but it fell victim to the U.S. government’s view of Mexican protectionism (especially ironic, because the Trump administration has been the most protectionist in a century) even though only 6% of the 92 routes the airlines projected during their first two years working together involved Mexico City. So a competition-enhancing deal gets blocked in the name of enhancing competition, which a monopolizing on does not. Go figure! Under the court’s ruling, DOT can be right that Mexico is violating its Open Skies obligations, and that there should be new resitrctions on Delta and Aeromexico, but they need to build a more coherent case first. ##### Topics on this page [Delta Air Lines](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/delta-air-lines/) [Aeroméxico](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/aeromexico/) [Joint venture](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/joint-venture/) [U.S. Department of Transportation](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/u-s-department-of-transportation/) [United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/united-states-court-of-appeals-for-the-eleventh-circuit/) [Administrative law](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/administrative-law/) [Airline alliance](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/airline-alliance/) [Allegiant Air](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/allegiant-air/) [American Airlines](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/american-airlines/) [Civil Aeronautics Board](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/civil-aeronautics-board/) [Donald Trump](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/donald-trump/) [EU–US Open Skies Agreement](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/eu-us-open-skies-agreement/) [Haneda Airport](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/haneda-airport/) [International Air Transport Association](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/international-air-transport-association/) [Japan](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/japan/) [Japan Airlines](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/japan-airlines/) [KLM](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/klm/) [Mexico](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/mexico/) [Mexico City](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/mexico-city/) [New York](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/new-york/) [Northwest Airlines](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/northwest-airlines/) [Supreme Court of the United States](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/supreme-court-of-the-united-states/) [United Airlines](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/united-airlines/) [United States antitrust law](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/united-states-antitrust-law/) [Viva](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/viva/) [White House](https://viewfromthewing.com/topic/white-house/)