Nov 8 (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Friday held that a trial judge correctly found that American Airlines’ AAL.O now-scrapped U.S. Northeast partnership with JetBlue Airways JBLU.O violated federal antitrust law.

Siding with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a trial judge’s ruling blocking the airlines’ “Northeast Alliance,” which had allowed the two carriers to coordinate flights and pool revenue.

U.S. Circuit Judge William Kayatta, writing for a three-judge panel, said the trial judge had been “presented with an arrangement that had many of the essential attributes of an agreement between two powerful competitors sharing revenues and divvying up highly concentrated markets.”

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