American Cuts Cathay Pacific Codeshare Because... Russia

Doesn’t UA codeshare on AI routes, particularly EWR/JFK-BOM that use Russian airspace?

@ Rob -- Nope, I can't find any UA flight numbers for those Air India services.

Ben can you still earn miles and loyalty points on these? I’d assume yes?

@ BenF -- Yep! No need for a flight to be a codeshare.

American has quietly dropped others. Good luck finding biz class on Qatar or Etihad.

Is the BOS to HKG flight using Russian airspace again?

American and Indian carriers can't put each other's codes on flights to and from India to the US or vice versa. They can only sell the tickets (probably through interline agreements) without putting in each other's codes. India and the US still need to sign a treaty where their carriers can have codeshare flights.

I see a lot of QR award availability in the next 60 days but nothing longer. EY can't be seen on AA anyways but there is plenty of EY award availability 1 year out

Award availability, which it appears you're talking about, and codeshares are two completely different things. AA has only (recently) dropped codeshares that overfly Russia, and probably only then because the US government made them.

I'm happy for a little inconvenience. Don't want to support Russia in any way, even if it's just symbolic.

Throw CX out of Oneworld, just as meanly and lowly as done to S7.

Shame the US govt decides for its citizens rather than giving them the freedom to choose. I for one am 100% against sending arms to Ukraine. I live in Mexico and we all understand that we are not free to choose an anti-US, pro Russian or Chinese candidate. Ukraine is in the same position but its corrupt leaders benefit too much from the current situation to accept reality

Actually, I've found that more award seats have been made available on Qatar through AA in the past few weeks that wasn't available before.

For example, I just flew from the Indian Subcontinent to the U.S. on Qsuites for 70K AA points last Thursday. I couldn't find any availability for QR Business for the last 8 months. Meanwhile, I found a large amount was just opened up a couple of weeks ago and there is consistent availability on my routes until the end of December.

Uh, this is *literally* what governments do. Go back under your rock.

A lot of strong emotions about Cathay flying over Russian airspace. I wonder if the posters also expressed these sentiments towards carriers that continued to fly to the United States after our unprovoked invasion of Iraq, and our indiscriminate combing campaigns stretching from Vietnam to today.

Companies and countries alike could not care less about morality, all that matters is what benefits them. As appalling as Russia’s invasion is, I feel equally strongly about Israeli and Saudi bombing campaigns in the Middle East, that the rest of the world couldn’t care less about. I’ll gladly fly Cathay, or any airline flying through Russian airspace if it’s convenient to me.

Who cares. You can still earn and redeem points, so it doesn't really matter if it is code share or not. Also, it's not like they are flying over the most problematic areas. To avoid a big piece of land like that is either very costly or not realistic. Surprised that Cathay flies West rather than East.

I have a flight already ticket in February with AAdvantage miles - HKG - JFK. Will they boot me if I’m an American?

Cathay Pacific is pretty much Air China South at this point anyways. It's only a matter of time before they leave Oneworld (and Starlux replaces them). The political situation that allowed an airline like Cathay Pacific to thrive and become a large global airline is no longer there.

> "If I’m redeeming miles, I can book a flight over Russian airspace on a foreign airline, while I can’t when paying cash."

This makes zero sense. If you’re redeeming miles, even if those miles are from American Airlines, you are buying a ticket on a Cathay Airlines coded flight. And yes, you CAN book that flight when paying cash -- from Cathay Airlines; the only difference is that American Airlines cannot resell it with its code. And that's for a good cause: tickets on flights bearing the code of American Airlines are eligible for the Buy America Act, and we don't want to use taxpayer's money to subsidize Putin, do we (Cathay will be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to Russia, the most expensive large airspace to overfly).

It's called selective moral outrage. And you typically hear from people who live on lands that were invaded and conquered by western european nations.

Whether you are an American or not doesn't matter, the issue is about AA flight numbers on CX metal. If you're ticketed with a CX flight number you should be fine, if they've used an AA flight number you have a problem.

So, if you buy American points, then book the tickets using points on the flights going over Russian airspace is not a violation!!!!

Wrong. The 2005 U.S. - India Open Skies agreement gives the carriers of both countries the right to codeshare on each other’s flights. See Article 8 paragraph 7. So far, the carriers haven’t negotiated commercial agreements implementing these rights.

Correct. The only thing that US law prohibits is a US airline putting their flight number on a flight that uses Russian airspace. Laws do not restrict US citizens, and nor do they prevent a US carrier from selling a ticket on a flight that uses Russian airspace (as I read it) as long as it's not marketed with a US carrier flight number.

On its web site Qantas sells revenue tickets with some or all of the sectors on Emirates flight numbers, and interline sectors in conjunction with QF flights to the US among other places, so I presume AA could do the same with CX flights, if they chose to (which, it appears they do with reward flights), without breaching US law.

My JFK-HKG flights in December got cancelled. Ticketed with AA flight number

Yes

Think again about the so called freedom. It doesn't really exist in reality.

Many travelers do not pay much attention to this but just book the flight that is direct and less flight time. If AA did not share with code and means losing marketing to such direct route, AA is the loser only. As other mentioned, other airlines have flights traveling over Russia space too ( shorter route and fuel less).