Originally Posted by irishguy28

That is no mystery!

The joint venture means that all 4 airlines (DL/AF/KL/AZ) operate as one -sharing all costs, revenues, planning, etc - so AZ as by far the junior partner can't sway things their way.

It seems that the Etihad folks, in particular, are keen to see Alitalia expand on transatlantic services. But they need DL/KL/AF to all sign off on this and they simply don't want to listen to AZ.

Of course, a lot of this could just be noise...does being able to run flights across the Atlantic without requiring the approval, and revenue-sharing, of the JV partners really warrant breaking out of the alliance? It may be that AZ no longer feels that the sum total of all the benefits it gets from alliance membership outweigh the negatives or lost opportunities. As regards feed, most of the airlines prefer to acept feed from AZ for their long haul flights, while only feeding to AZ for its shorthaul network. I think there may be quite an imbalance there, and that they may be justified in breaking free.

But even on a more fundamental level, the relationship is somewhat dysfunctional - as you will know from travelling on AF/AZ or KL/AZ tickets.

I just checked in, with KLM, for an Alitalia-coded KL flight. Despite being Freccia Alata, KLM never allowed me to select a seat, even when I got the ladies at the Flying Blue desk in the Crown Lounge at Schiphol on the case (I gave up when, after giving the lady the required half an hour to ring around and try to find how to select a seat for me, the upshot was that I would have to pay €20 to select a seat). At check-in earlier this morning, no seat selection was possible - they just dumped me in a seat (luckily not a middle seat, and luckily not too far back).

They were also "unable to determine your baggage allowance", although they did at least recognise that my boarding pass deserved a SkyPriority red flash.