AA partnerships with Alaska and Jet Blue

[SelectSys]

Alaska joining One World is bringing their relationship back to where it was previously with American, where AA is going to depend once again on Alaska for service along the west coast instead of making halfhearted efforts of creating a presence on their own.  Like previous attempts in the past both internally and via mergers with Air California and Reno Air, AA gives up again.  In the east, Jet Blue is the new partner to help leverage their east coast network.  

 

I historically flew a lot on AA, but have drifted away these last 5 or 6 years due to changes in my travel patterns.  To me these seem like positive steps for the company, but I am really not sure if they will help AA materially.  What do you all think about these new alliance efforts and will they succeed in helping AA?

[Ashland]

I think AA could help itself a bit more if they followed the distancing guidelines...their getting a bad reputation now apparently.

[CruiserBruce]

AA is reportedly the shakiest of the airlines during the pandemic. Thus, they are throwing caution to the wind, and flying more flights, and making more decisions to potentially take advantage of their competition playing it more cautiously.

[MSUjohn]

as a layman.....AA the largest in the world, "partnering" with a pair sizable national airlines doesn't this raise antitrust issues?  

[CruiserBruce]

20 minutes ago, MSUjohn said:

as a layman.....AA the largest in the world, "partnering" with a pair sizable national airlines doesn't this raise antitrust issues?  

Obviously not...virtually all airlines are in alliances. And United fully merged with Continental, for example.

[MSUjohn]

1 minute ago, CruiserBruce said:

Obviously not...virtually all airlines are in alliances. And United fully merged with Continental, for example.

I would politely say that "obviously" is a bit strong of a word here. the big three legacy airlines are all in a separate alliance (delta for instance is in sky team), and airline alliances allow for seamless travel to secondary and tertiary destinations overseas; like being from Detroit and wanting to go to Budapest I would fly delta to Amsterdam and connect on KLM to Hungary. that is a different animal than my question.

 

mergers are also a different animal (although I would say the US has been over consolidated since 2000)