Not directly related to the Chinese discussion, but my question works well enough with the heading of the topic: What is the benefit for AY in this Japanese cartel? They're strong in Japan, the Japanese like AY, AY is able to offer the strangest one-stop connections out there, like VCE-FUK or whatever. What's the point in sharing this revenue with IB who doesn't even fly either to Finland or Japan, or with BA, for whom Japan is no big thing (they're only re-starting KIX this spring, currently TYO is their only Japanese destination)? And JL, shouldn't that be AY's biggest competitor?

Do they reason that with the JV, they can keep prices higher and get more revenue, even if some of it needs to be shared? There's a ton of other, non-JV airlines flying between Europe and Japan, so it really makes no sense to me. Or is it really the other way around; with the cartel, Spain and UK feed more pax to AY than withtout it, IB and BA being so weak in Japan? If yes, then it makes sense for AY.