Three new agreements signal a renewed effort by the Star Alliance to boost its Latin American presence.
Star co-founders United Airlines and Lufthansa in May reached accords with major Latin airlines. United and Brazil's TAM are to codeshare, and Lufthansa has signed wide-ranging agreements with TAM and Central American consortium carrier Grupo TACA.
Star has been keen to add one or more Latin American members after Mexicana left the alliance in 2004. The situation was exacerbated early this year when Brazil's Varig quit, leaving Star without any Latin members.
The United-TAM codeshare covers between, behind and beyond gateway access by both carriers to each others' domestic networks. It is modelled on last year's United/TACA agreement.
Lufthansa's new accords with TAM and TACA are memoranda of understanding to examine forms of co-operation. They include codesharing on domestic and international routes, schedule co-ordination, loyalty plan links and reciprocal lounge access. Lufthansa chief executive Wolfgang Mayrhuber declines to "speculate" if the German carrier's deals with TAM and TACA may lead to either becoming Star members, but says: "We put ourselves in the shoes of the customers and organising codeshares for them is logical."
The deals follow a codeshare agreement TAM forged with Star's TAP Portugal in April. TAM views a pact with Lufthansa as key to resuming its own Frankfurt flights, which it flew in 2001, but discovered that most traffic was connecting in Frankfurt to other points in Europe. Without a codeshare with Lufthansa for European connections, TAM found the route unprofitable.
The United and Lufthansa accords are an effort to bracket Latin America's major markets. TACA's strength is in Central America and Peru while TAM is dominant in Brazil.
Source: Airline Business
