rkkwan

Maybe I will see IAH-HKG non-stop before I die.

But anyways, CX award availability will be a good thing, for selfish reason.

ndhapple

Out of most cities there wouldn't be that much direct route overlap. You can't book AUS-IAH or HOU on AA.com without manual forcing the connection through a multicity itinerary. I haven't checked in a while, but the same used to go for AUS-DFW on CO.com. Those are both carriers two biggest routes out of this airport (with ORD/SJC and EWR as close seconds for each respective carrier) and there is little if any overlap.

If anything this just offers more potential connecting points. CLE instead of ORD, DFW instead of IAH, as well as CO customers new onstops out of AUS to SJC, LAX, and SEA without having to backtrack to IAH. AA FF's would finally get the NYC nonstops we've been begging for (to EWR but whatever) and a nonstop to CLE would be nice.

bernardd

I think you're missing the point. The airlines are losing money - AA could well lose more than $1 billion in 2008 if it can't get its revenues up. They can't get ticket prices up if the competition is strong, so the only way any alliance is worth the effort is if either:

a) they work with CO to cut the number of available seats, sell less of the deep discount tickets but fill the planes up with passengers using more expensive fare buckets

b) by working with CO they can steal a chunk of market share from UA, US, DL, NW or, since we're talking Texas, from WN.


Any way you add it up this is not the land of milk and honey we're looking at here, but a world with higher priced travel on planes with ever higher load factors.

FWAAA

While you're probably dead-on, my post had nothing to do with intra-TX fares. I doubt that competition between CO and AA are keeping intra-TX fares reasonable - I assume WN has been responsible for that all along.

Anglo Large Clawed Otter

Travel from anywhere in Texas to Mexico/Central America/S. America will become hideously expensive (and it's not especially cheap now). I can only hope that AM starts some fare wars out of IAH from time to time.

dan1431

While the prospects of AA does not exactly please me, I am extatic that ContiUnihound is not happening any time soon.

OneWorld does not buy CO much except Cathay which is superior to Korean and OneWorld top elites get access to First Class Lounges while traveling Intl.

Dan

CO 1E

CX is the only thing I would look forward to with a CO/AA alliance. BA is ok, but nothing to be terribly excited over.

COFan

I am just not sure what we gain by oneworld. Granted I too would like CX, that alone is not reason enough for it. There seems (to me at least) too much over lap with AA. And what exactly would BA offer? They do fly to almost anywhere in Europe. But CO already has a good amount of EU direct flights. Moreover it would mean flying into LGW or LHR for those connections. My experience has rarely been pleasant at either airport. And BA has been known to cancel flights on a whim, suffered that personally more than once.

I realize that CO does not have many route expansions planed. (Given the delays with the 787, and the slow down in the Economy). So maybe it would be wise to team up with BA to offer a larger service area to Europe. Are they losing out traffic by not offering flights to certain destinations? They seem to have all the major markets well covered if not needing more capacity.

Just at this moment I dont see the great value of Oneworld or the great need.

ndhapple

You would also get intra-Central and South America benefits with Mexicana, LAN, and American (do they still fly a few intra SA's as positioning runs or continuations?) You'd also get lounge access for BA, CX, JAL, QF, LAN etc. There are some good OneWorld benefits that you would miss especially if you weren't a member of another alliance.

G-man82

I'm wondering what would happen to CO's agreements with VS if it were to enter an alliance with AA and BA. When Jet Airways set an agreement with VS, BA automatically pulled out of its agreement with Jet. Would the same thing happen with CO?

rjque

You can bet nobody at either AA or CO will ever admit this. Indeed, I can see the government using exactly this analysis to attempt to block an AA/CO alliance.

COFan

As far as I can tell CO along with Copa have Central America covered. Granted South America could be bolstered I dont really know how good their service is there or how much more of a demand there are for those legs to want a greater market share down there. I have only been to South America a few times...oddly enough all with AA (and the service was spotty at best). My travel is focused to Europe and with some in the East.


As for lounge access, thats nice but not enough to make me on board with a move to OneWorld. And we already have an agreement with QF, so again I dont see the great advantage. Admittedly I can be focused too much on Europe and not enough globally, however I dont see the great global coverage provided by OneWorld.

bernardd

Unfortunately politicians have a strong tendency to meddle in the free market when there's an election in sight. IMO what they ought to be asking themselves is whether the consumer is better served by 3 healthy, profitable legacy carriers, plus WN, B6, AS, plus AirTran, Virgin, maybe Frontier etc. Or is the consumer better served by an arbitrary 6 legacies, but all of them perpetually one step from Chapter 11? I know which I'd prefer!

sbm12

Do you really think that having fewer majors/legacies is what would make a difference? As long as someone is willing to throw some money out and see if they can make a go of it, another SkyBus of JetBlue will be founded and give it a go. Sometimes it works (B6 seems to be) and sometimes it doesn't (SkyBus), but it does affect all the other carriers in the market, regardless of how many there are. Shutting down a legacy is a much faster way to get rid of capacity since they generally are bigger, but that doesn't necessarily solve the problem(s), especially if there is someone else with cash to fund another startup and add the capacity back into the system.

bernardd

I don't disagree that failure of one or more legacies would be a solution. In generally the US industry seems to be partly the product of too much meddling, and partly the result of some crazy provisions in the Chapter 11 laws, plus the abuse of the pensions system. IMO it's time got back to the old fashioned notion of businesses existing to make profits that are distributed to stockholders. If the business fails it gets closed and stays closed, even if some of the assets are bought and used to start another fully funded enterprise.

Should there be 3 or 6 or 11 legacy carriers in the US? I don't know, but at this point the competition in generally from WN, B6 etc etc is strong enough that quickest and easist fix is for the politicians to back off spouting about competition, allow foreigners to own the businesses if they're foolish enough, close up some of the abuses of Chapter 11 and let the consumers decide where they want to spend their dollars. It would be rough for a while but in the medium term it's by far the best solution.