Delta to partner with WestJet?
 

"WestJet has been laying the groundwork for such a deal with Air France/KLM and China Airlines. Before it fully implements those deals, WestJet appears to be prioritizing a partnership with a U.S. carrier due to the high amount of traffic crossing the border, Mr. Saretsky said.

"Fitting WestJet's new ambition, Mr. Saretsky said it is now more likely it will first partner with U.S. legacy carrier Delta Air Lines rather than the expected deal with Southwest Airlines. While WestJet has often strived to be the Canadian version of Southwest, the U.S. low-cost carrier lacks a reservation system capable of code-sharing."

http://www.financialpost.com/news-se...tml?id=2731968

Delta codeshares with WestJet?
 

http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_...y-westjet.html

According to this newspaper blog, it looks like WestJet may be considering a Delta codeshare instead of the much-delayed WN codesharing. Interesting.

For those of us that spend a lot of time in Canada, WestJet would be a nice addition, albeit w/o FC.

Apparently, WN is simply unprepared to handle the codeshare agreement - their systems simply aren't set up to work that way. At the end of the day, I would think that WestJet will end up in bed with either DL or AA (or both), and that WN will be left out in the cold, unless they can come up with something quickly. Even then, given WestJet's daliances with the likes of AF/KL, I wonder if they aren't looking for a pretty broad set of partners. Of course, this doesn't preclude WN, but just how much investment is WN worth, if they are just one of several partners? It just seems easier for them to work with airlines that have done this before, rather than WN, who has gone out of their way to avoid any such tie-ups.

KL doesn't offer anything approaching F on short-haul routes, and that partnership seems to work pretty well.

With the DL/NW merger, DL got access to a lot of Canadian cities that they never flew to before but NW did.

Are there still places in Canada you go to that aren't covered by the NW side of the merger?

It'd be nice to have another partner. A lot of the Canada flights from the northern hubs (DTW, JFK) are on RJs so a 737 with AVOD would be a step up.

Would this push WestJet to the point where they would consider joining SkyTeam?

The article I read made it seem like they would be happy to play the field. Apparently, the guy running the show is a former AS guy and thought that their promiscuity was a real plus for them.

Why join an Alliance when you don't have to? AS has been successful partnering with DL and AA.

WestJet flies to 31 destinations in Canada. Delta flies to 13.

Bulletin issued today:

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8330/4.5.0.175 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

So, if you are in YUL, and an IRROP condition exists--you are basically stranded (I'm assuming that DL will not send pax on AC)?

I'm not sure what agreements DL has in Canada, but you won't be flying on WestJet haha

(btw, God thanks you for giving him a reason to make your next award redemption +500 lol)

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8330/4.5.0.175 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

And gone are the days of Canadi<n

WS is my hometown airline, they've been playing around with several alliances of late, they talked up heavily a BA tie-up that led many to believe they were looking at OneWorld and being the de facto replacement Canadi<n

Then there was the KL/AF tie-up on the YYC-AMS flights (WS provides connections to various western Canadian cities such as YEG, YLW etc.)

All in all though it's been pretty underwhelming. WN did have a prominent link to WS on it's website for about 3 months with 'more info to come' on the supposed broad code-sharing deal and there was even a direct link to book WS tickets from the WN site - but this seems to have all quietly disappeared of late.

WS did go through (a very painful) process of converting it's Res system to Sabre which will undoubtedly pave the way to full code-sharing/partnering with any legacy carrier if they so chose. WS has had a lot of bad PR during the conversion, so WN doubtless has looked on with interest/concern and learned a lot about the risks of such a massive switchover. So while WS is now far better placed than WN in this regard, WN could well be taking a back seat on such a major step in the current economy.