Parker Erkmann

Parker’s practice focuses on antitrust, competition, and regulatory issues in the aviation and communications industries. His antitrust experience includes merger, civil non-merger and criminal matters involving the airline, travel distribution, broadcast television, and video programming industries. Parker’s experience also includes matters before the US Department of Transportation (DOT), the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as private litigation. He regularly advises clients on minimizing regulatory and antitrust risks arising from competitor collaborations, joint ventures, acquisitions and other transactions.

Parker also represents aviation clients before the DOT on a variety of regulatory issues, including airline certification, joint ventures, the acquisition of slots and foreign route authorities, as well as enforcement proceedings and compliance matters.

Parker’s representative matters include:

• Representing Gray Television in its acquisitions of Hoak Media, Schurz Communications, Raycom Media and Quincy Media, including negotiating consent decrees with the DOJ’s Antitrust Division to address competitive concerns
• Representing an airline industry organization in multiple acquisitions, technology transactions, partnerships and regulatory compliance
• Representing airlines in the acquisition of foreign route authorities, including contested proceedings before the DOT
• Representing a US airline in its certification as a new passenger airline
• Successfully defending Airline Tariff Publishing Company in an antitrust lawsuit brought by a group of travel agents, alleging that ATPCO conspired with three major US airlines to increase the price of multicity itineraries
• Representing a television station ownership group in In re: Local TV Ads Antitrust Litigation, in which purported class advertisers alleged that television stations increased prices through an information exchange
• Representing airlines and investors in connection with the restrictions on foreign ownership of US airlines, including compliance with the requirement that a domestic airline remain a “citizen of the United States” as defined in 49 US Code 40102(a)(15)
• Representing a foreign airline in the DOJ Antitrust Division’s air cargo price-fixing investigation