jjglaze77

http://www.airliners.net/discussions....main/2160751/

Copa, Air Europa, Kenya, and Tarom... Wow! I'm most excited about Kenya, any thoughts?

http://www.airliners.net/discussions....main/2163187/

Portugalia as well!

Kibison

I like Copa being added. That will help on my trips between SJO and PTY.

woody125

Air Europa needs an English site. Maybe I'm just blind but I don't see it.

This helps me not one bit. Getting Aeroflot fully on board is still my only SkyTeam wish.

RobertS975

As far as I am concerned, the more members, the better. The only one that I would be likely to frequent is Air Europa, mostly for domestic Spain flights.

CelticFlyer

I think it is a work in progress but what there is can be found here . I guess they will link them from the drop down once they have sorted out the languages and don't have Italian in the French version etc. .

jimrpa

Has anyone even HEARD of any of these airlines? Why is Delta suddenly all excited to hook up with unknown airlines (copa, elal, etc.) I'd really appreciate it if Delta and SkyTeam could work on some Name Brand airlines (Virgin, for example).

PMMMDL

From jimrpa:

"Has anyone even HEARD of any of these airlines? Why is Delta suddenly all excited to hook up with unknown airlines (copa, elal, etc.) I'd really appreciate it if Delta and SkyTeam could work on some Name Brand airlines (Virgin, for example)."

These are the first "Associate Members" and smaller airlines that are primarily for feed for the major carriers long haul flights. COPA for C. America, Kenya for Africa, Air Europa for Spain, and TAROM for S.E. Europe.

Skyteam is supposed to announce another major airline to become a full member in the next month or two.

Bretteee

I do not agree with you that Copa, El Al and Kenya Airways are "unknown".

egtravel

Nor do I. I'm pretty excited about the announcement. Copa (Panama) is great for me anyway, living in Southern California and Kenya Airways gives me more options in Africa for when I turn in buku miles to fly to Africa for my safari! My only hope is that nothing happens to my business elite trip planned on DL to Panama in December! I can see them dropping ATL-PTY and going wholly with Copa. Unless they put me on the non-stop from LAX-PTY in first class, then I may not mind too much.

remyontheroad

Umm.. thanks for the perspective from Wayne, PA...

It's a big world and lots of us DL flyers spend lots of time tooling around lots of it. What's wrong with adding more opportunities to earn/spend more miles in more parts of the world??

And, uh, yup.... I've heard of all of them. Seems like a couple of others have too...

Cholula

I’m in jimrpa’s camp on this one. The only one I’ve ever heard of is Tarom and that’s only because a group of FT’ers are always joking about them.
I’m glad that a few others here are overjoyed at four rather lame airlines joining ST but I can’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling over the announcement.
My future flight plans don’t yet include Kenya, Romania, Panama or Spain.
But as RobertS975 said, I guess the more members of ST, the better.Can’t argue with that.

RobertS975

Look, DL has flights to both MAD and BCN from two different hubs, but no opportunity for onward connections from either destination. The addition of Air Europa will provide numerous opportunities for onward connections from both MAD and BCN...

http://www.aireuropa.com/es/guia_pas...s/default.html

And COPA has been a close partner of CO for years, has OnePass as its FF program, and even paints their modern 737NG fleet so closely to resemble CO that it is hard to tell them apart.

These carriers are not main trunk members of ST, but welcome additions nonetheless. Look for other second tier carriers like Royal Air Maroc etc. to eventually come on board as well.

Do we all fervently hope for a major world carrier like JAL or Malaysian or Emirates... sure! But these four carriers just made it possible to earn MQMs
to dozens of new destinations.

CelticFlyer

Hmmm - I think that if the DL board starts calling other SkyTeam members "lame", expecially associate members, we'll soon find that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. DL isn't exactly the strongest member of SkyTeam!

MikeMpls

Where will Virgin take me? London? I already have plenty of options for reaching London, really don't need another way to go see the queen.

Kenya Airways? Fantastic!!!! This is good news. And since Kenya is being sponsored by KLM which also partners closely with NWA, this should work out well for us.

Thanks for the original post!

CelticFlyer

Hey - would you turn down Virgin if they wanted to join SkyTeam? I wouldn't ..... but Branson has not been keen to enter an alliance to date.