Final US govt approval for American Airlines, Qantas joint business

July 23, 2019: The US department of transportation (DOT) has given its final approval for a joint business agreement between American Airlines and Qantas. The airlines can now jointly offer more products to serve customers flying between the United States and Australia and New Zealand. This has been a longstanding business objective of the partnership.

“We look forward to working closely with our valued partner, Qantas, on this new joint business,” said American’s chairman and CEO Doug Parker.

“We now have the opportunity to launch new routes and provide enhanced service with better schedules, additional frequent flyer benefits and continued investments in the overall customer experience. We are grateful to Secretary Chao and the DOT team, as we welcome this fantastic news for our customers and team members,” added Parker.

Final approval follows the DOT’s tentative approval of the joint business in June this year.

The final approval will allow for commercial integration between the carriers, delivering new routes and significant customer benefits not possible through any other form of cooperation, including:

The opportunity to launch new routes and flights to new destinations, including city pairs not currently served by either carrier; an expanded codeshare relationship and optimised schedules on trans-Pacific services, opening up more connections to more destinations and reduced total travel time; better access to seats on each carrier’s network, leading to lower fares; additional frequent flyer benefits by further integrating the carriers’ programmes, including higher earn rates for points on each other’s networks beyond what is possible today through oneworld, as well as increased redemption opportunities and improved reciprocal end-to-end recognition of our top-tier frequent flyers and co-location at airports and investments in lounges, baggage systems and other infrastructure designed to better serve the carriers’ joint customers