Could Aer Lingus and United Airlines finally be ending their (at this point) very strange partnership?
Continue reading: Aer Lingus & United Airlines End Codeshare Agreement
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I totally agree with you. It’s even more odd with their sister companies BA and IB (all three belong to IAG), where you can earn Avios when flying EI, but other than that enjoy no benefits.
Please keep us updated. I'm flying Aer Lingus in January and have it credited to my United MileagePlus account, since crediting to American wasn't an option.
For a while Aer Lingus flew MAD-IAD on behalf on United. That was an oddball route.
To me the agreement made total sense when it was first out in place. Aer Lingus left OW in 2007 to become a point to point carrier only to realise it couldn’t compete with Ryanair. So then it started looking for ways to return to legacy status. This United partnership was it, without having to the OW partners it left behind!
I live in Cork and to visit family in the US we would fly Cork-Heathrow on Aer Lingus to connect onwards with United to Washington-Dulles. This airline split does not sound, personally, good for me as American Airlines has no Dulles service from Heathrow. Sounds like my trips will become more expensive. Not everyone in Ireland lives in Dublin.
While the JV component is unique in having a codeshare w/ a direct competitor to the JV, there are other notable exceptions to "codesharing w/ the enemy." Latam has codeshare partnerships outside of Skyteam and even outside of DL equity companies; they just announced increased codesharing w/ the LH Group even though DL owns equity in both Air France/KLM and Virgin Atlantic as well as Latam.
Latam is clearly trying to partner w/ as many carriers as possible to keep that traffic out of Gol's hands and that strategy might be somewhat relevant to EI - but it does help UA at the expense of AA which highlights the discussion earlier this week about why AA underperforms DL and UA; while not a major factor, it is real.
Many of these commercial agreements likely were signed years ago and have long contract terms; ironically, JVs have regular timelines for being assessed, at least by the governments.
It is also possible that EI and IAG are afraid of the dominance they would have over the Ireland-UK market and have allowed the UA-EI relationship to continue longer than necessary since UA is the only one of the big 3 US carriers that does not have a JV partner in the UK.
Scott Kirby will be expanding UAL’s Atlantic and Pacific footprint with 110 787s on order. Look for United to expand its flying to steal Aer Lingus’s market share.
I hope this indicates two things. 1) SFO-DUB returns. That route I think could be a J only plane and it would fill up these days. 2)EI really joins OW in a more earnest way and you can get some reciprocal perks for having AA status.
I don't understand aer lingus not opening philadelphia Shannon route. Shannon such a pleasure to fly through. Less then an hour from galway. I also see a demand for this route.
"Latam has codeshare partnerships outside of Skyteam and even outside of DL equity companies" - LATAM is not a member of Skyteam. DL is only a 10% shareholder, and so does QR have a 10% stake in LATAM. LATAM even has 10 oneworld FF partners vs 3 SkyTeam partners.
"Latam is clearly trying to partner w/ as many carriers as possible to keep that traffic out of Gol's hands" - that may be partially true, but the main thing is they have no idea what they are doing, just like all of DL's core partners who keep going bankrupt every couple of years and getting money thrown at, just because without them, Delta would become irrelevant in the most important markets in the world. On the verge of bankruptcy, they accepted DL's money and gave up AA. Now they are trying to hold on to IB, because becoming irrelevant in both MIA and MAD will be a suicide pill for them. Don't worry, they are almost there 🙂
In the same vein, why do Oneworld passengers get no credit or benefits when flying Vueling? Since Vueling has all but taken over Europe from Iberia in Barcelona, it makes Barcelona a hard to reach city unless transiting via Madrid, not mentioning that the MAD-BCN-MAD "Puente Aereo" is under attack both by High Speed Trains and Greta Thurnberg's pals. Expect it to be substantially downsized, like Paris-Lyon and Bordeaux with Air France, or, as they now call themselves, AIRFRANCE.
That makes sense. American is a more logical partner for Aer Lingus than United. I don’t know why Aer Lingus hasn’t returned to Oneworld though.
Air France at least does a much better job of serving their country outside their hub cities than cough cough Lufthansa.
UAL is on quite a "cancellation roll" ? Didn't they just do the same thing to LOT ?
Okay is SFO to Dublin finally happening then or LAX to Dublin? United could clearly do those routes in the summer.
Gawd. PLEASE rejoin OneWorld. I literally ONLY fly OW airlines. Even if it adds stops or increases pricing. Earning those miles/status and getting full reciprocal benefits is very important to me as a heavy traveler.
I agree that it's odd, but back when they first left OW it was stated they were trying to become point to point. IAG also has LEVEL/Vueling and about to add Air Europa and I haven't heard of them joining OW. I do wish that ALL of them would join and show them rest of the alliances just how big OW/IAG really are in Western Europe.
Because Vueling is a budget airline that isn't in OneWorld. Just like you don't get OneWorld benefits flying Jetstar or Zipair, or Star Alliance benefits flying Scoot
The lack of credits/benefits given to you doesn't prevent you from flying them. You may not want to fly them without it, but saying it makes Barcelona "hard to reach" seems a bit of a stretch!
Time for Aer Lingus to Join ONEWORLD and be a full partner in the TA Joint Business effort. Develop Dublin as a full Connection Center for increased travel options.
Sure, but Vueling/Level are a point-to-point LCC concept and not part of the Joint-Venture (JV). For instance, they do not offer J. Meanwhile EI is providing similar services like BA/IB and - in my view most importantly - is part of the JV.
As far as UX is concerned, there is still no green light by anti-trust authorities. Certainly joining (or not) the JV is something to be considered by the authorities. To a lesser degree also alliance membership.