Indelaware

You are making several assumptions, including a big assumption - viz. that JFK does not have O&D travelers. While I love EWR and disdain JFK, there are many people traveling to/from NYC for whom JFK is acceptable - even preferred.

Additionally, there are *A travelers for whom JFK is an acceptable connecting point to/from a TATL flight - e.g. YYZ-JFK-XXX, LAX-JFK-XXX, and SFO-JFK-XXX. One can also fairly easily connect between JFK & LGA, further increasing the number of passengers for whom JFK is not unreasonable.

Another advantage of CMN-JFK-CMM for *A carriers, because of flight times, for many in Africa served by AT, not having to transit through Europe means not having to overnight enroute. Remember, too there are also travelers who for visa reasons cannot transit through Europe.

worldtraveller73

Interesting rumor.

I wonder if that will affect their current FFP partnership with Etihad (earn and redeem)?

cannon80

This would be excellent news for those of us living in African backwaters (well, backwaters at least as far as major European carriers are concerned). I'm in Bangui, and while, yes, the AF flight to Paris is more comfortable, they only offer one RT a week, leaving Paris on a Tuesday morning and returning (via a 5-hour mandatory stopover in Cameroon during which you're kept in a huge holding cell and not allowed to enter the main airport) by early Wednesday morning.

We have two AT flights a week, with much more humane departure times to Casa, and from there it's straightforward to get to most places in Europe, as well as North Africa and the Middle East.

I'd be thrilled if I didn't have to "throw away" my miles into the Safar program. I have an old Etihad account, but they only count discounted economy tickets 50-75% on AT.

Please keep me updated, as I have a flight on AT at the end of February. Is AT joining *A likely to happen soon? I'll let you all know if I hear anything.

oliver2002

They have a decent coverage of West Africa, which they leverage quite a bit here in Germany:



They cleaned up their act and look well organised:
http://centreforaviation.com/analysi...ability-204363

SN covers quite a bit of Europe-W. Africa, but the more coverage the better. The PEK-CMN link should attract quite a bit of China-Africa traffic currently served only by the ME3 at this point.

Indelaware

Joining takes quite a bit of time. Its still just a rumor, besides. Perhaps February, 2016 - if you are lucky.

If your concern is earning miles on a plan that you could actually use, you could consider joining ET. Then you could fly the short hop BGF-DLA (ET operated by KP), connect to ET DLA-ADD from where one can hop easily to Europe. Yes, it is certainly longer. But your earned miles could be more widely used.

dvs7310

China to Africa is better served than you're giving credit for. Don't forget, TK and ET both also cover PEK, PVG, and CAN + HKG. ET has appeared to be heavily reliant on transit pax to Africa when I've flown them and TK offers a lot of connections into Africa as well. SA picks up a bit of this as well from PEK & HKG but their logical connections are in the southern end of the continent. MS & KQ both have China flight as well.