Last week I wrote about how American was apparently in advanced talks regarding buying a stake in China Southern. Well, it's a rumor no more, as that stake has now been finalized. It was announced today that American has committed to making a $200 million equity investment in China Southern, which they claim "creates a…
Continue reading: What American’s $200 Million Investment In China Southern Means For Passengers
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CAN is a tier 1 airport. Unless someone gives up their tier 1 slots, they can only add IIRC 2 flights a week.
For this to be effective/useful for AA flyers, I'm guessing we would have to see codeshares on China Southern out of Shanghai primarily. Doesn't make sense for it to only really focus on routes out of CAN. Wiki says PVG has a good amount of China Southern flights, and has ample service to ORD/LAX/DFW
Connecting between AA and CZ at PEK will be a huge pain. Currently AA is in T3 and CZ in T2. The only free link between T3 and T2 are shuttle buses. The train only goes T3-->T2 and is pretty expensive.
...at what point will it be too much before an alliance/joint venture will be deemed too big, before they're slapped with antitrust? We've seen QF and AA's expansion hit by that, so why not this? I personally don't see that much difference..
Token investment after getting shutout on the new route. Fit examples where gov't wants a foreign company to partner with a local for access/ease of operation.
China Southern is a 'meh' airline ... so with them joining together with American, this seems to be a partnership of equals.
China Southern already has a lot of flights out of PVG and PEK. In China, it is more point-to-point than hub-and-spoke. Even when it is not this airline's hub, it might still have a decent amount of non-stop flights to other cities.
Wow Lucky, I see you made a few assumptions based on either nothing or based on your hatred of AA.
What would make you think that other Chinese carriers weren't interested in AA? US ans CA did codeshare but AA ended that codedhare not the other wsy around.
Hainan wants to be in ONEWORLD but one airline is blocking their entry.
UA has no financial stake in CA and they are NOT close.
Since CX has CA they can't get upset ar AA doing whatever is in their best interest. And CX has codeshares with LH & AC so it cant be a slap in the face for CX.
Does the deal between American and China Southern include Xiamen Airlines? Will Xiamen remain part of the Skyteam?
This is much more about PEK and PVG than anything to do with CX or CAN.
China Southern has focus cities at PEK and but because of the Chinese government rule that only one Chinese carrier can fly each international city pair, they cannot launch any intercontinental flights from PEK or PVG to the U.S. Instead, they'll be happy to take the AA feed and AA will have a partner that can connect pax to many second and third tier cities.
And AA will be happy to take any US feed from China Southern in the US but this is a secondary goal to AA getting through ticketing rights at PEK and PVG.
This is interesting! I travel a lot to China for work and do intra-China flights one or two times per trip. Shenzhen Air is part of Star Alliance and you'll get amazing reciprocal benefits with Star Alliance Gold. Each time I fly with them, I get VIP check in, free bags (if I needed to check any), lounge access, get to select a seat at the front of the Economy cabin at check in (where they often don't put anyone in the middle seats) and can take the VIP/first class bus to and from a remote stand. I would hope China Southern would emulate this since I also have EXP status on American. Intra-China flights are a complete disaster, so these benefits go a LONG way to make the experience a bit smoother.
Given oneworld's limited footprint in China, I'm gonna say this is a good thing.
The point of this is to connect passengers to cities other than PEK and PVG. Huge gain for OW fliers to tier 2 cities in China. I'm tired of booking *A just so i can connect on Air china.