Originally Posted by
NickB
But would they? What proportions of LH Hons are not based in EMEA? Ditto for BA GGLs? And vice-versa for US airlines outside the Americas? If you are based in Paris and your travel radiates throughout the whole world, AA CK is going to be of relatively limited use to you even if you could theoretically attain it as only a fraction of your travels are going to be on AA anyway.On balance, I suspect that you would prefer something that makes your flying with AF more pleasant/bearable even if it has fewer bells and whistles than a super-duper programme on a US airline. If your traffic is mostly tatl, then clearly that is a different story, of course. Ditto with Gulf airlines, mutatis mutandis.
Agreed. But even attracting customers from within EMEA should be relevant and interesting for airlines. If AFKL managed to take away customers from IAG and LH Group in markets that would be a good thing for them. There are large markets that do have more limited connections from a home carrier than the large hubs : Italy, Belgium, Nordics, Portugal for instance are markets where people will have to change through one of the hubs for many of their longhaul trips, as opposed to people in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt who are captive whenever convenience of global connections on one airline are concerned. Someone in Amsterdam has is extremely likely to have all his/her needs covered by KL, same someone in Frankfurt having covered everything through LH. Someone in Milan does not have that with AZ, nor someone in Stockholm with SK, let alone someone in Athens or Cairo.