Studies of airline mergers have largely focused on measuring the impact of mergers on average airfares. As a result, they may not sufficiently reveal the full range of price effects given the complexity of this industry. To address such industry intricacy, I investigate prices of merging firms and their rivals in response to the United-Continental merger on three types of routes: those include one or both endpoint airports as merging firms’ hubs (hub routes), those primarily consisting of price-sensitive leisure travelers (leisure routes), and those more likely to have both price-insensitive business passengers and leisure consumers (big-city routes). Results show that on hub routes, the merger creates hub premiums for merging firms and benefit legacy rivals rather than low-cost carrier rivals to raise fares. On big-city routes, the merging firms increase fares for business travelers but not for leisure passengers, and reduce prices for leisure travelers on leisure routes. Their legacy rivals increase fares on leisure routes but not on big-city routes. This finding suggests that a critical reason for inconsistent conclusions in previous research may be the failure to consider details of the airline industry.

航空公司合并的研究主要集中于衡量合并对平均机票价格的影响。结果，鉴于该行业的复杂性，它们可能无法充分揭示价格影响的全部范围。为了解决这种行业错综复杂的情况，我针对三种航线对联合公司及其竞争对手的价格进行了调查，以应对美联航的并购行为：这些航线包括一个或两个端点机场作为合并公司的枢纽（枢纽航线），主要包括价格敏感的休闲旅客（休闲路线），以及价格敏感的商务旅客和休闲消费者（大城市路线）的可能性更高。结果显示，在枢纽航线上，合并为合并公司创造了枢纽保费，使传统竞争对手受益，而不是低成本航空公司的竞争对手提高票价。在大城市的路线上，合并后的公司增加商务旅客的票价，但不增加休闲旅客的票价，并降低休闲路线上休闲旅客的价格。他们的传统竞争对手在休闲路线上增加票价，但在大城市路线上则没有。这一发现表明，先前研究结论不一致的一个关键原因可能是未能考虑航空业的细节。