FILE - Alaska Airlines planes are shown parked at gates with Mount Rainier in the background at sunrise, March 1, 2021, at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle.

In this week’s aviation news, Alaska Airlines’ acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines took a big step forward as the Justice Department decided it won’t try to block the transaction due to antitrust concerns; the Transportation Security Administration says air travel over the Labor Day holiday will be the busiest ever; the Federal Aviation Administration turns over dozens more cases of unruly passengers to the FBI for possible criminal prosecution; Avelo Airlines and Southwest drop some California routes; United starts up LAX-Shanghai flights; U.S. carriers extend their suspension of Israel routes; Delta has a new benefits program for business travelers; Alaska Airlines teams up with Expedia for a new hotel and vacation rental booking platform; San Francisco International kicks off a $2.6 billion overhaul of Terminal 3.

Alaska Airlines said its planned $1.9 billion acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines achieved “a significant milestone” this week when the deadline passed for the Justice Department to complete its antitrust review, and the agency took no action to challenge the deal. This was a bit of a surprise since the Biden administration’s DOJ has taken a tough stance on other airline combinations, successfully suing to stop JetBlue’s acquisition of Spirit Airlines and its Northeast Alliance partnership with American Airlines. But DOJ’s antitrust team is mainly concerned with preventing combined companies from stifling competition by controlling too large a share of the market, and apparently the investigators didn’t see that happening with the Alaska-Hawaiian proposal, since several airlines actively compete on continental U.S.-Hawaii routes. DOJ didn’t even attach any conditions on its clearance of the Alaska-Hawaiian deal — as it did in 2016, when the agency required Alaska to sharply cut back the scale of its code-sharing with American Airlines before it could proceed with its acquisition of Virgin America.

The proposed combination is still subject to an expected approval from the Department of Transportation. “Following that step,” Alaska said, “we will complete work to close the transaction, and proceed with integrating the two companies.” Hawaii Gov. Josh Green hailed the merger plan as beneficial for his state, noting that Alaska will “maintain the Hawaiian Airlines brand” instead of absorbing it. “The merger will vastly expand the number of destinations throughout North America for Hawaii residents that can be reached non-stop or one-stop from the islands, and HawaiianMiles members will retain the value of their miles while gaining access to more destinations around the world,” he said.

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