Seattlenerd

Is that just revenue tickets? Because I have a Condor award ticket SEA-FRA-SEA that definitely crosses an ocean, and is definitely on AS stock.

ashill

Yes, AS can certainly issue long haul award tickets. (No other airline can issue an award redeemed with AS miles.)

Aliquot

The End-on-end restrictions that for short time were universal on all but the most expensive AA fares have been slowly going away. There are still a lot of them, but more fares are showing up without them. I just booked an AS-AA ticket with the AA segment in Q. It was availible through both AA and AS with a click through from book with matrix.

quemalo

Can you provide us with an example? I haven't been able to get something reasonably priced to come up at all.

FlyingBear

I was looking at a fare for SFO-SEA-ORD-MCO in Jan where the last leg is a codeshare with AA. In the last week, the price for the one way has dropped from $500+ to $320 to $280. Hoping this is a sign of things to come for codeshares rather than a one off case.

BW Flyer

This change certainly will hurt business travelers, since the AS network is very small compared to the big 3. I remember having to buy tickets on AA website because the AS codeshare flights were so expensive on AS web site. I may have to fly more on DL to get to the East Coast and Southern second-tier cities after this AA relationship downgrade, because I am not a fan of AA, and DL has great coverage in those regions, where AS only flies to a few major cities there.

bdhaliwa

The amazing redemption options for AS program are getting a little less amazing by the day it seems. Right now C/F reduction on CX are the only real thing going on for this program, except maybe occasional reductions you see on EK. AS better keep both of them

Mauibaby2008

I would hope no more shoes drop for a very long time ..

BOSTravels

When AA loses QR redemptions in the near future, it will be the most worthless program on earth.

Http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...074.1499641620

WebTraveler

Maybe all this was going to happen anyway, regardless of the Virgin America purchase. On the outside looking in, it appears the Virgin America deal is not only a big zero for existing Alaska customers, but probably is a massive negative.

But industry consolidation has been in the works. There are the three majors (AA, United, and Delta) and Southwest, and then smaller players like Alaska. So maybe Alaska had to act to preserve itself because the big three is just bigger, so much bigger.

But what I do not get is why Alaska had to divest itself of so many codeshares in this deal.....when United can swallow an entire airline (Continental), and AA (can absorb US Air, which was also an absorption of so many carriers). But Alaska has to divest itself across the board because it controlled too much of LAX after the merger? Sheesh. This is all b.s.

We have to give up connections and tie ins on FF programs? We can let Albertsons and Safeway merge and operate two brands a mile from each other and still operate both stores. We can let Amazon control the world. And regulators are worried about Alaska's tie in with American?

Maybe bigger issues at work and there probably are, but dang, Alaska is going to suck big time for awhile before it hopefully gets better again.

Baze

I would not say it is a big fat zero or a negative. I live in the Bay Area and it was very hard being an AS flyer as just about had to route everything through SEA or PDX. VX opened up a LOT of routes out of the Bay Area. Sure, for now it is hard getting recognition as an AS elite on VX flights, but it can be done and it will get better. The merger is one of the main reasons I moved over to AS from UA. The partnership with AA helped a lot too. Will have to see how much it really hurts with most of the AA partnership going away. But VX was a plus for a Bay Area AS flyer.

channa

There are different types of codeshare agreements -- some that allow flights to be sold as standalone, and others that require connections. AS and AA had the deepest possible codeshare relationship, in that they could sell the flights as standalone (e.g., I several times bought SFO-MIA through AS so I could use my change fee waiver and/or get better miles).

With this nonstop codeshare agreement, each carrier could set their own fares, and although it's the same plane, it's as close as true competition as you can get without flying another plane. From the regulators' perspective, this is like flying the route as well. Had they had a lesser codeshare agreement, it's likely it would have been able to stand (e.g., you can only book a codeshare as a connection, or a codeshare in conjunction with one of the carrier's native flights), as it would have resulted in only connecting itineraries being codeshareable, and those have a lot more competitive options than nonstops.

Despite UA and CO being much larger, they were highly disparate networks with focuses in different parts of the country. Their nonstop overlap was some like 13 routes in total. When you take VX and AS, and include the former AA codeshare routes, the route overlap was actually more than UA/CO.

They all had to give up something when they merged. I believe CO had to give up some gates at EWR. US/AA had to divest slots and/or gates in DCA/LGA.


Agreed. The AA partnership was a backup to an airline that didn't take us everywhere. It should get better when they get rid of the VX code which will allow us to use those flights to connect to AA flights (something that is currently not permitted). And hopefully they'll start serving AA hubs from the Bay Area and allowing connections to places that are available to SEA/PDX customers, but not LAX/SFO, as we have no access to most AA codeshare destinations from California. But in the meantime, it's going to bad, and they should recognize this and throw a bone to California customers who were disproportionately impacted by this AA loss -- the customers they were supposedly hoping to retain/grow.

milypan

Just to clarify, it was US that absorbed AA, not the other way around. And US itself had been previously absorbed by HP. In each case HP kept the more prominent of the brands. Doesn't affect your argument.

Mauibaby2008

I'm a little confused by this. So the mileage redemption chart reads:

US/North America in business/first to SOUTH AMERICA ZONE 1 is currently 40,000/ will become 52,500 ... (but currently it costs 30,000 from NYC to Peru in business class)

What does this route cost after Dec 31 - 52,500 one way?

sdsearch

I don't think you read that article closely / completely. SInce AA and QR are both in the oneworld alliance, AA can't cut ties completely with QR without first getting QR thrown out of the oneworld alliance. So it's much more complicated than AA cutting ties with EK (with which it has nothing other than a one-off relationship).

AA could make a special award chart for QR with worse redemption rates, and/or remove the exceptions that QR has for one-award routings to Africa and the Indian Subcontinent, or something like that, but I think that's the most it can do.