Alaska Airlines gets US approval to buy Virgin America

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alaska Airlines has won government approval to buy rival Virgin America after agreeing to reduce its flight-selling partnership with American Airlines.

To win the government's approval, Alaska will stop selling seats on American Airlines flights — a so-called code-sharing agreement — on 45 routes.

Alaska also agreed to notify the government before it tries to sell or trade assets that Virgin America got from American Airlines and US Airways when those two carriers merged in 2013.

The Alaska-Virgin America tie-up is the latest — and among the smallest — in a series of deals that have reduced the number of competing airlines in the U.S. The Obama administration's Justice Department, which was criticized for approving the American-US Airways deal after extracting relatively modest concessions, took a surprisingly long time to review Alaska's purchase.