Originally Posted by
Yaatri
I was thinking of LCC's like Air Asia. What I meant to say was that most LCC's are not MITA signatories. However, airlines can i terline without being signatories to MITA.
LCC's in the U.S. would not be able to get on without interlining.
There is no re ason why an LCC cannot be an IATA member. Jetblue is an IATA member.
Even ULCCs like Air Asia consider interlining - with the recent cross ownership deal with Malaysia Airlines, there will be a very close interlining/codesharing agreement between AirAsia/AirAsia X/Malaysia Airlines pretty soon...
Airlines can of course intelrine without being MITA signatories.
In the US, Southwest does not interline. They can't even interline with their fully owned subsidiary, AirTran. Really quite a sad state of affairs for them.
As for LCCs not being IATA members, it is because the costs of becoming a full member are high for a true LCC. While many airlines avail of some functions of IATA (which is how they can claim that they "represent" 84% of the airlines in the world), the number of full IATA members are much less. JetBlue is not a full IATA member according to the most recent copy of the IATA coding directory that I could get my hands on (2008).
Edit: It looks like JetBlue joined IATA as a full member in 2010.