On 11 September 2026 the Czech competition authority ÚOHS announced that it has allowed Turkey's Pegasus group to acquire České aerolinie a.s. and with it the carrier Smartwings. Clearance is conditional on commitments the Turkish company proposed itself, centred on handing part of its summer-season slots on the scheduled Prague–Antalya route to another airline. ÚOHS states that the decision was issued at the end of August but is not yet final, because the period for filing an appeal has not expired. The authority had been examining the case since May. It found the competition problem in the overlap on scheduled direct passenger flights between Prague and Antalya in the summer season, where the merged entity would have reached a very high market share with a wide gap to its competitors, and where — contrary to earlier expectations — no further carriers had entered the route. ÚOHS says the purpose of the structural commitment is to let potential competitors gain access to airport slots quickly.
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