American, JetBlue Negotiate Code-Share

[FA Mikey]

American Airlines and JetBlue are negotiating a code-share agreement that could be in place as early as the first quarter of 2011.
"We are negotiating, working towards perhaps a code-share in the future," Art Torno, American's vice president for New York told TheStreet. He emphasized that no agreement has been reached so far.

The two carriers recently announced plans to enable customers to earn frequent flier miles on either airline on connecting flights. The next step, said JetBlue spokesman Bryan Baldwin, is for the carriers to post interline itineraries on their websites.


full article here

 

[FA Mikey]

American, JetBlue expand connecting-flights deal

The airlines also announced that they will expand a partnership struck in March to offer passengers connections to nine more U.S. cities and to Budapest, Hungary. Passengers can connect at JetBlue hubs at New York's Kennedy Airport and Boston to American flights to 15 foreign destinations. They can book both legs at the same time.

full article here

 

[damajagua]

Firts an interline agreement. now talks of a codesharing..........What is next joining Oneworld........and perhaps
eventually merging......but that is long shot.

 

[700UW]

Since LH owns part of B6 you wont see them join OneWorld.

 

[eolesen]

I wouldn't bet a whole lot on that, UW. You have to remember that LH bought into B6 while the FAA was talking about slot auctions at JFK, and before CO joined Star. It was touted as an investment, but was seen by many inside the industry as a defensive move in case LH needed a source of slots at JFK.

So far, LH has allowed everything they've done with AA, and as well as the announcement this week about an agreement between B6 and Emirates. (http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/post/2010/11/jetblue--emirates-alliance/131273/1?csp=34travel )

Perhaps LH hasn't unwound their investment because it's making them some money, and they ultimately benefit either way if this winds up undermining DL and/or Skyteam more than it does LH or Star. So my guess is they leave things alone. They don't have enough of a share to really influence the decision making, and probably don't care as long as they have the connecting JV revenue via EWR and local market at JFK.

 

[WorldTraveler]

LH has been quite adamant that they would use a hands off management of B6. It isn't lost on them that 20% is not that big of a role and that if they try to interject themselves in the affairs of a US airline which could backfire significantly if the opportunity ever arises to relax US airline ownership controls.

Given that LH uses Star airlines CO and UA to feed its flights and it has a revenue sharing agreement w/ those two and not B6, there are very valid economic reasons why LH maintains a hands off approach to B6 and uses it now as a passive investment.

The reason why AA and B6 have decided to work together to the extent they both can is simple - both airlines are dropping in their relative positions in the NE... against a combined UA/CO, an aggressive WN that is set to become a significant force in NYC, and DL that has overtaken AA as the largest airline on the NY side of NYC, and has taken share from B6 at JFK, even in the domestic market. Further, in BOS, DL by next summer will replace AA as the largest international airline and will overtake US and AA in North America to be #2 behind B6 while WN has overtaken B6 as BOS' fastest growing airline. It becomes convenient for AA and B6 to cooperate in order to counter the growth of other carriers.
At the same time, AA is pulling out of markets in the NE and finds the B6 option of putting the AA code on B6 flights as the lose-least option, esp. since AA's labor contracts don't have much teeth to stop AA from codesharing in markets that AA doesn't fly - so AA will continue to pull out of markets.