American Airlines and QANTAS are filing for anti-trust immunity for a joint business agreement between the two airlines across the Pacific between the US and Australia. This doesn’t mean revenue sharing at the moment because American Airlines doesn’t have flights on those routes.

This request doesn’t come as a surprise whatsoever and fits neatly within what AA has been doing with all of its Oneworld partners. Not only does AA not have flights to Australia and New Zealand now, I honestly don’t believe they’ll have them in the future.

There is a reason why QANTAS is coming to DFW airport and it isn’t to provide interim lift for AA. I’m certain American sees QANTAS as the perfect airline to operate those routes and sees itself as the aggregator of traffic for QANTAS.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax