Oh man, I just fell out of my chair with excitement. I am, of course, Mr. United Airlines (Esq.), but now that I'm living in China, my mileage plus account has been hurting on domestic travel. (RDMs, but no EQMs.. and substandard service on CA.) I know this won't be fixed overnight, but I can see that I'm going to be in China for a while.

I'm looking forward to this process. UA and LH should be able to help CA get their things in order. For example, in Shanghai, if you have a so-called e-ticket on CA, you have to go to a machine to print out your paper ticket before you can check in! How ridiculous is that. I'm willing to bet they'll have to implement "real" e-tickets as part of their ascession into *A.

Hooray for CA. Hooray for UA. It's good for everyone. And it's going to be much more valuable than Shanghai Airlines joining the Alliance.