The huge fines meted out to British Airways last year for collusion with Virgin Atlantic on the level of fuel surcharges were maybe not so huge after all. Time lends new perspective.
BA paid out £121.5 million to the UK's Office of Fair Trading after being fingered by Virgin, and a further $300 million to the US Department of Justice after admitting price-fixing in both its passenger and cargo operations.
Four more airlines received fines totalling $504 million in the US last week after agreeing to plead guilty to involvement in a conspiracy to fix surcharges on cargo.
Air France-KLM took the biggest hit - $350 million. Cathay Pacific will pay $60 million, SAS Scandinavian Airlines $52 million and Martinair - a carrier half-owned by Air France-KLM - $42 million.
According to the US justice department, Air France-KLM conspired with other airlines to suppress and eliminate competition by fixing rates for air shipments to and from the US for six years from January 2000.
Lufthansa played the role of Virgin, escaping a heavy US fine by being first to volunteer information to the justice department. No doubt this has not led to cordial relations between Paris and Frankfurt.
Fines so far imposed total $1.2 billion. Korean Air has paid out $300 million, Japan Airlines $110 million and Qantas $61 million. Up to 30 airlines are under the microscope in the US, individuals face criminal prosecutions and investigators in the European Union and elsewhere are at work - so expect further fines.
Qantas claimed the distinction of being the first airline to have a former executive sent to jail last week. Brian McCaffrey, ex-head of freight operations in the US, received an eight-month sentence and a $20,000 fine.
Then there are the class-action lawsuits. BA and Virgin Atlantic agreed a $200 million settlement with US lawyers acting on behalf of passengers in February, and Lufthansa settled a claim by cargo customers for $85 million in March.
None of this is handy going into the biggest aviation downturn in decades. As they say in the US - do the math.
But the most interesting question remains unanswered. How on earth did this come about? The industry was not especially in crisis at the point at which these acts of conspiracy or collusion commenced. The cargo conspiracy allegedly began in 2000. The fuel-surcharge collusion dated from 2004.
Was it due to ignorance of the law on a vast scale? Should we blame collective hubris at a senior level? Or have some of the habits of a generation of airline executives fallen foul of an unexpected zeal among enforcement agencies?