Market implications of creating the world’s biggest airline

For those of you studying or teaching OCR’s A2 Economics ‘Transport’ option, you may well have tackled, or be tackling, the ‘market structure’ section of the course. There is always usually at least one ‘market structure’ question of some sort on each paper and relevant application to the world of transport is often a weak point for some pupils.

This article from the Guardian reports the approval of the merger between United and Continental to create the world’s biggest airline, in an industry which has struggled over the past decade. I suspect there are plenty of relevant Business and Economic issues to draw from this article from the impact of dominant firms and their actions on the industry, to the Business issues of growth through mergers and the relevant benefits and problems that may arise.