Transportation

Transportation

Compass Lexecon has extensive experience applying sophisticated economic analysis to complex issues in the transportation industry, including cases involving airlines, automobiles, trucking, ocean shipping, and railroads. Our expertise includes merger analysis, antitrust litigation, regulatory proceedings, valuation disputes, and arbitrations. We have presented analyses to the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation, and State, in federal and state courts, and to numerous regulatory agencies in the U.S. and abroad. Our work includes: evaluating relevant markets, analyzing competitive effects, quantifying potential damages, analysis of alleged subsidies, and evaluating the economic merit of antitrust claims, including claims of collusion, price fixing, and other anticompetitive conduct.

Compass Lexecon’s work on behalf of airline industry clients includes analyzing the competitive impact of mergers and alliances, evaluating economic issues in various antitrust litigations, and advising clients in arbitration. Our economists use complex data and analytics, including cutting-edge econometric techniques, to analyze the costs and benefits of domestic airline mergers to determine whether those mergers would be procompetitive or anticompetitive. These analyses have been presented to the U.S. Department of Justice and in federal court, and have covered price fixing investigations and litigation concerning the setting of air cargo rates, fuel surcharges, and baggage fees, among other issues. We have contributed analysis in numerous merger proceedings, including the US Airways and American Airlines deal and the Virgin Atlantic and Delta transaction, among others.

Compass Lexecon also has experience providing expert testimony and analysis in Chapter 11 restructurings, including the restructurings of United Air Lines, Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, US Airways, Atlas, Comair, and Mesaba. Our economists also apply their airline industry knowledge to analysis central to policy debates, including the impact of subsidies on airline competition and analyzing the competitive impact of granting antitrust immunity to international airline alliances.

Compass Lexecon aviation experts also provide independent expert testimony and litigation support in labor arbitrations, Presidential Emergency Boards, and in federal court. Our aviation experts have unparalleled experience at analyzing issues related to scope clause challenges, labor productivity, and costing and statistical analyses of potential job actions.

Compass Lexecon also has extensive global experience in the rail industry. We have been retained to provide testimony on a range of regulatory proceedings and antitrust cases involving railroads. Our litigation-focused work has included analyzing allegations of price fixing for the transportation of bulk chemicals on tanker ships and fuel surcharge antitrust litigation. We also analyzed the economic impacts of several, high-profile railroad mergers, providing analysis of relevant markets, competitive impacts, proposed remedies, as well as performing cost-saving analyses and evaluating claims by specific shippers. The breadth of our railroad experience makes us uniquely qualified to testify in regulatory proceedings. Our economists have presented testimony in hearings before Congress and submitted testimony to the Surface Transportation Board on a range of competitive issues related to competition and pricing in the rail industry, rate cases, and stand-alone cost proceedings. When a matter calls for in-depth knowledge of rail costing or engineering, we have the unique ability to call upon our colleagues at the FTI Network Industries Strategies group for assistance with quantitative analysis.

Compass Lexecon has also developed extensive knowledge of other transportation sectors in the course of our antitrust merger and litigation work. Recent cases include class proceedings involving roll-on/roll-off vessel services, a merger involving natural gas pipelines, and a damages analysis involving the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

We have experience addressing the following areas for the transportation industry:

  • Antitrust Litigation
  • Mergers and Acquisitions
  • Price Fixing
  • Labor and Employment
  • Damages
  • Financial Distress and Solvency
  • Corporate Governance
  • Valuation
  • Regulatory Work