American & Starlux Launch Interline Agreement… Partnership To Come?

Taiwan-based Starlux Airlines has announced plans to collaborate with American Airlines. However, for the time being, this isn’t a very close level of cooperation.

American & Starlux interline agreement details

Starlux and American plan to launch an interline agreement, which is the most basic level of cooperation you’ll find between airlines. This allows passengers to book a ticket that includes travel on both Starlux and American, and have more of a seamless journey, with bags being checked between carriers.

For context, Starlux currently flies from Taipei (TPE) to Los Angeles (LAX), Ontario (ONT), San Francisco (SFO), and Seattle (SEA), and service to Phoenix (PHX) is launching soon. Specifically, this new interline agreement seems to be in anticipation of that new Phoenix service, since American will be able to provide connectivity for Starlux there.

An interline agreement is the most basic level of cooperation between airlines. Just to give a sense of how basic the cooperation is, American also has an interline agreement with both Delta and United, and they aren’t exactly partners. 😉

For now, the extent of the cooperation between the two companies is an interline agreement. So let me emphasize that there’s no loyalty program reciprocity, no codeshare agreement, no mutual alliance membership, no joint venture, etc.

Could we see closer American & Starlux cooperation?

While an interline agreement doesn’t necessarily foreshadow much closer cooperation, we know that Starlux would like to partner more closely with American. For example, Starlux and Alaska have a partnership, which includes frequent flyer reciprocity, among other things.

We also know that Starlux wants to join the oneworld alliance, and big picture, that makes sense in terms of industry dynamics. That’s because the two other full service airlines in Taiwan — China Airlines and EVA Air — belong to the other two global alliances.

But yeah, the politics in the airline industry can be complicated:

• American is generally hesitant to launch partnerships with airlines unless they’re in oneworld, or unless they don’t pose any competition to the carrier’s joint ventures; American has a transpacific joint venture with Japan Airlines, so has a strong incentive to route Asia traffic through Japan
• If Starlux were to join oneworld, there’s the question of whether any of the founding airlines, like Cathay Pacific, would try to block it, given geographic proximity

Personally, I would guess that we’ll only see closer cooperation between Starlux and American if Starlux is invited to join oneworld. The fact that Starlux’s CEO has said for over a year now that he’d like the airline to join oneworld, yet there has been no progress, suggests to me that maybe it’s not so simple. So we’ll see how this all plays out…

Bottom line

Starlux Airlines and American Airlines are launching an interline agreement, which comes ahead of the Taiwan-based carrier adding flights to Phoenix. An interline agreement allows travelers to book tickets with flights on both airlines, but it doesn’t include a codeshare agreement, or any sort of frequent flyer reciprocity.

This is better than nothing, but not much to get excited about. I think the big question is how this evolves over time, especially with Starlux’s desire to join oneworld.

What do you make of of American and Starlux launching an interline agreement?