The following from Bloomberg news:

"Continental in Talks With European Carriers, Sunday Times Says
Feb 14 1999 18:04

Continental Airlines Inc. is in talks with Air France, Alitalia SpA, Northwest Airlines Corp. and Delta Air Lines Inc. to form a global alliance to rival British Airways Plc's Oneworld group, the Sunday Times reported. The alliance, which would be called Wings, could also include London-based Virgin Atlantic Airways. Greg Brenneman, president at Continental, is said to be looking for an Asian carrier and may be trying to attract Singapore Airlines Ltd. into the alliance, the Sunday Times reported."


All together now, 1, 2, 3, Merge! 1, 2, 3, Merge!

DL, CO, and NW in one alliance? That will be a mess! However, if they get SQ, I will remain loyal to this alliance for a long time!

I'm wondering what this would do to the alleged alliance between U-A and DELTA? Both airlines are supposed to be sharing things (though I can't make nose or bushy tails about this deal.)

So CO wants its own alliance. What will they call it? "GLOBAL PASSPORT?"

Then in time all the airlines will merge in one alliance called "ONE STARRY WORLD PASS."

Except Virgin which will link up with Aeroflot and Southwest to form the "At least we're still flying" alliance. CATMAN

I think we all know the Delta/UA alliance is a joke, but I'd have to wonder what would make a CO/DL alliance more acceptable to the pilots?

Catman ~ The DL/UA alliance is quite simple, because there are so few new benefits:

1) You can earn UA milage on a DL flight or DL milage on a UA flight within the US. No elite bonuses apply.

2) You can redeem UA milage for awards on DL or DL milage for awards on UA.

Beyond that, there are no benefits.

Even that last benefit is somewhat of a misnomer. You cannot claim awards on UA Express or DL Express Connection Link (or whatever they call it now) so it is not possible to get to many smaller destinations using UA miles on DL (or vice versa). Since both carriers fly to most of the big detinations anyway this is not much of a benefit.

MileKing ~ I think there is a big benefit to United frequent fliers trying to get to the Caribbean, since UA's flights are weak to non-existent in that area, aren't they?

Beckles, I have no idea about Caribbean flights. If UA is weak to the Caribbean then I guess it would be useful to UA FFs. All in all, I still think this alliance is nothing to write home about.

I tend to agree with Mileking, it looks like CO are pulling together a couple of second rate European Airlines.

It is interesting that Alitalia have also announced further links with AA over the last couple of days.

The Sunday Times has been running with this story for a couple of months now, with Virgin's name being repeatedly thrown in. I have no doubt that CO's wings will take-off, but I wouldn't be suprised by considerable movement on the participants from this list.

Things have changed recently for Alliances. Until the beggining of this year Alliances were 'sold' on their scope and networks, OneWorld is managing to change that to the quality of their members as being important.

Is it really wise for CO to hook-up with the second level players? I certainly don't think Virgin Atlantic would be happy with that. It would also make the position of Virgin Express very difficult.
MF