EY doesn't need that much feed from/to AA at JFK, ORD, DFW, LAX to fill their flights at a rather decent price. The reason EY has been growing as is is largely due to single-connection service to/from LDCs. [The same is even more true for EK and also true for QR].

EY is eating into AA's TATL JV revenue and will be eating more into it in the future. I'm not sure why AA and it's TATL JV brethren would like EY .... but then again they brought QR into the game and AA obviously made some kind of deals with EY on various matters. Is QR in or going to be part of the AA TATL JV? If EY isn't willing or able to play that AA TATL JV game (especially when busting a move on Alitalia), the game is more like chess than checkers. This will be something interesting to watch, just to see how it turns out.