US DOT grants antitrust immunity to OW
 

As expected, the US DOT gave clearance for a greater cooperation between IBBA and AA. So hopefully the AA and BA earners will soon be able to get rid of those nasty footnotes for TATL flights.

There are a few conditions attached mainly in the form of LHR landing rights having to go to *A or Skyteam for some services.

Press release here:

http://aa.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=2971

Ugh. I joined Executive Club because I was flying in Club World TATL (paid for by someone else :D) and wanted to earn credit for it, which I couldn't do on my AA miles account. Then I burned most of my AA miles and decided to credit my future OW flights to BA. IFlying here in the states its much easier to earn bonus miles on AAdvantage over Executive Club. Now I have ~40K BA miles, ~6K AA miles, and I'm not sure which one to keep pursuing. Any thoughts?

I don't really fly enough to try to get status on either, but I feel like AA is a better choice because I'm usually flying out of ORD and then I also don't have to deal with Tier Points trying to get status.

Well, the first issue will be that the antitrust approval will actually lead to the removal of the mileage earning restriction. Only once this is done will it make sense to switch. If you mainly fly AA, then their program will be the better one for you. If you mainly fly BA things might be a bit different.

There are long discussion threads here on the AA forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1107595

..and on the BA forum here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1105334

Obviously lots to be sorted out, but I summarize two main sentiments:
- AA Elites excited to earn/use miles (and hopefully SWUs) on BA TATL premium products.
- BA Elites concerned about hordes unwashed AA Elites consuming space on the same.

My suspicion is that there will be some preservation of elevated access to BA Elites on BA TATL flights. For example there was a suggestion that "upgrades" for AA SWU would leverage WT+ as the "interim step" to CW; so that SWUs would be limited to AA passengers willing to pay for WT+ first.

Stick with BA until it's all sorted out. There's lots of speculation and few facts at the moment.

Why would an AA SWU work on a BA flight anyway?

My personal suspicion is we will find out the new scheme when AA, BA and IB announce it. What a novel concept. But until then, let the rampant speculation, conjecture, arguing, what if scenarios, and he said/she said continue as it is quite entertaining.

No doubt some guesses will be right. Who knows maybe even someone will have some inside information and we will find out the details minutes or days before others. Boy will we feel special then! ;)

Until then I will wait on making next year's travel plans (May-Oct 2011) after an announcement is made to see if the new scheme makes any difference.

Technically, the title of this thread in inaccurate. This doesn't grant ATI for oneworld. It only grants it to a few of the participants on the North Atlantic, and does nothing for CX, JL, QF, LAN, etc...

But thats more because it doesn't concern them. If one of them would be flying a significant amount of US-Europe traffic then they too would have been part of this process.

No argument there, but again, it's a little ignorant to be reporting this is ATI for oneworld, which it clearly isn't. It's ATI for a fraction of the oneworld network and a few of the carriers in that network. I expect ignorance from the media, but not from people here who know better...

Oh dear. Maybe next time I will call the thread "EU and US Department of Transportation grant conditional antitrust immunity to oneworld members American Airlines, British Airways, Iberia, Royal Jordanian and Finnair".

But there is a reason why everyone is saying oneworld since this is the headline of the official DOT release: Further down:

True. But I haven't read any media accounts reporting this is a oneworld ATI. All of the PRs I have read talk about AA, BA and IB both in the headlines and in content. The articles may refer to them as members of oneworld and how this ATI will benefit oneworld (which it will), a case in point would be the press release from oneworld site itself, especially the statement from oneworld Managing Partner John McCulloch: http://www.oneworld.com/ow/news/details?objectID=22419

So really no difference in the oneworld site and FT oneworld forum discussing it in that perspective. Perhaps your real pet peeve is with the title of this thread, not the media accounts. But really we need to relax and not worry so much about semantics IMO (as I go on and on ;) ). Life is way too short.

If you are someone who redeems miles for domestic flights in the US, then considering you are ORD based, BA miles are actually very good for you as BA allows stopovers in AA hubs. Let me know if you need more info.

Thanks, UA Fan . So that means that if I wanted to get an award ticket, say, ORD-STT, I could stop in MIA for a couple of days on the way? What does it consider as an AA hub? Obviously, ORD/DTW/MIA, but what about BOS or JFK?

I think you can do this, the mileage would be for ORD-STT (not sure if that is 25K). Basically look at standard awards on aa.com and look at the various routings permitted. With BA miles you can have unlimited stopovers along valid routes.

aa.com shows PHX-PHL going through DFW and ORD. I could stop at both DFW and ORD. You are almost getting two tickets in one award. But you need to have definitive plans as BA does not allow any changes 24 hours prior to departure.