September 25, 2012 on 1:00 pm | In Airline News | 1 Comment
American Airlines has made a formal request of the Allied Pilots Association to return to the negotiating table. We believe this is entirely due to the “work to rules” action that pilots are engaging in over the past few weeks at American Airlines. Hey, when your on-time record plunges more than 20 percentage points in a month’s time, you’ve got to do something.
Frankly, I’m ambivalent about this. On the one hand, it’s rewarding atrocious behavior designed to directly impact customers and thereby directly impact a company that continues to issue paychecks to these same pilots.
On the other hand, I would point a finger at American Airlines and point out that while the company did try to make a deal, it wasn’t done out of sheer anger. No one at AA understands that the rage among labor needs to be cooled. This is a mistake that gets repeated over and over and over again in the airline world and I do not understand it.
Both parties have done very badly for their constituents and both need to clean up their behavior. Neither will.
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September 25, 2012 on 1:00 am | In Airline News | No Comments
Calgary based WestJet has done another code share deal with a major legacy airline. This time, it’s with British Airways, a Oneworld alliance member. British Airways passengers on BA flights to Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver will be able to connect on WestJet flights to final destinations.
WestJet’s code share partners are now:
- American Airlines (Oneworld)
- British Airways (Oneworld)
- Cathay Pacific (Oneworld)
- China Eastern (SkyTeam)
- Delta Air Lines (SkyTeam)
- Japan Airlines (Oneworld)
- KLM (SkyTeam)
- Korean Air (SkyTeam)
WestJet appears to be very agnostic to alliances but hasn’t yet established any codeshare relationships with Star Alliance members to date. Why? Air Canada is in the Star Alliance. They do, however, have interline agreements with a variety of Star Alliance members.
Curiously, WestJet has aggressively sought relationships with large, multi-national legacy airlines and it appears to be paying off for them and their partners. This is a model that has worked well for Alaska Airlines and it’s notable that WestJet’s CEO, Gregg Saretsky, worked as a senior executive at Alaska Airlines prior to joining WestJet.
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