Airline alliance

An airline alliance is a strategic alliance of several air carriers (airlines ). The companies remain independent.

The forerunner of all current airline alliances were the two consortia ATLAS and KSSU, which joined several European airlines at the end of the 1960s. These consortia were used initially to maintain the operation, maintenance and training costs at entry into the then new wide-body aircraft as low as possible. In subsequent years, evolved from the cooperation between them, standardized maintenance procedures as well as standardized training programs for pilots and technical staff. In addition, two consortia will set a series of standards for aircraft components fixed (eg galleys ) and shared the maintenance of its aircraft to another. Both consortia remained until the mid -1990s.

Today's alliances focus less on technical cooperation but to air operations. To this end, the companies agreed their schedules from each other and use this elements as common frequent flyer programs, consistent booking systems and a mutual letting of seats in their planes (see codeshare ).

Alliances between airlines, are mainly formed and therefore, because the aviation law is organized nationally. Within a country, only domestic and bilateral agreements duly authorized airlines allowed to fly between two countries, a bilateral agreement is always required. Due to the national structure of these agreements would lose this part of their landing rights at a cross-border merger of airlines. Despite lower savings therefore alliances is usually given preference.

Assessment

Aviation alliances allow cost reduction through codeshare through shared facilities ( sales offices, maintenance, catering, computer systems ), common body of personnel, economies of scale in purchasing (due to higher decreases) as well as a reduction in costs for frequent flyer program. The individual airlines can offer by joining an alliance, a greater choice of flight segments and connection options.

For consumers, this results matched ideally travel times and optimized offers. From the perspective of the passenger such alliances can bring but also disadvantages, for example, if the movement does not involve the actual booked by the passenger airline, but another member of the alliance with possibly poorer service or lower safety standards.

List

The following table contains the three most important international aviation alliances:

Another alliance is the union of two cargo airlines to WOW.

Another major airline alliance was the Qualiflyer Group to the former Swiss airline Swissair. It was abolished in 2001. Similarly, the AiRUnion ( five Russian airlines ) was dissolved in 2008.

The largest national alliance was the Xinxing Alliance in the PRC. Six Chinese airlines, including Hainan Airlines and Sichuan Airlines, worked in this alliance together briefly.