Mr. Joe Thompson:

There are precedents of a sort which can be looked at and learned from, specifically with regard to remedies the European Commission has applied to previous mergers and acquisitions in the airline industry that have been passed but which have had adverse impacts for consumers which have required remedies to be put in place. Two forms of remedy are common. One is commitments to give up slots on certain routes to encourage competition for other airlines to come onto those routes. Those are often multi-year in duration but they do not have a very successful track record of being effective because it is not easy competing with a monopoly provider who is well entrenched with frequent flyers and the corporate customer base. We have learned that from our experience operating flights on remedy slots between Heathrow and Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Similarly, there is a precedent from the IAG acquisition of BMI where the legacy interline arrangements between the legacy partners of British Midlands were protected for a period of time. They were only partially protected and we think it is possible to learn from that experience to apply a more effective remedy. That is what we would call on the European Commission to do this time. There is a clear precedent for those types of remedies to be multi-year in duration with a period to review at a point in time to observe if competitive harm has been amended via other means.