The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a Department of Transportation (DOT) order on August 20, 2026, that would have required Delta Air Lines and Aeroméxico to dismantle their cross-border joint venture. The appellate court's decision enables both carriers to maintain their commercial partnership and continue coordinating flight schedules, ticket pricing, and capacity under the antitrust immunity originally granted to them in 2016.
In its ruling, the court determined that the DOT failed to provide a reasonable explanation for applying a far narrower competitive evaluation than it had historically utilized in previous airline alliance reviews. When the regulatory agency initially approved the partnership in 2016, it conducted a comprehensive examination of competition across the entire US-Mexico market and 1,687 individual city pairs. In contrast, the DOT's 2025 review focused primarily on slot conditions at Mexico City International Airport (MEX), which accounts for approximately 21% of total flights between the two nations.
The court emphasized that the department's final order lacked updated airline market share data, omitted any prospective analysis of how market shares might evolve if the joint venture continued, and failed to execute a fresh evaluation of individual city-pair markets. Consequently, the appellate panel held that the DOT's action was arbitrary and capricious, as the agency departed drastically from its uniform practice of analyzing country-pair and city-pair markets without justifying why such comprehensive reviews were unnecessary in this instance.
The regulatory dispute originated from policies enacted by the Mexican government, including mandatory reductions in available slots at Mexico City International Airport and a decree relocating all dedicated cargo operations from MEX to Felipe Ángeles International Airport (NLU (NLU)). US authorities argued these actions distorted market competition and breached the 2015 US-Mexico Air Transport Agreement, prompting the DOT to issue its September 2025 order revoking approval and antitrust immunity for the carriers' alliance.
Because the appeals court had previously issued a stay on the DOT order in November 2025, Delta Air Lines and Aeroméxico were never forced to dissolve their joint venture. Both airlines welcomed the latest judicial decision, with Aeroméxico confirming that the joint venture and its antitrust immunity remain fully active. The court clarified that its ruling addresses the department's analytical and procedural shortcomings rather than making a definitive finding on whether the partnership itself is pro-competitive.
