DAVID KNIBB SEATTLE
In three separate actions, Washington is reshaping codeshare alliances between US and Asian carriers.
In the first case to involve Vietnam-US air services, the US Department of Transpor-tation (DoT) has given three US carriers authority to serve Vietnam via codeshares with third-country carriers.
Delta Air Lines will codeshare on Air France flights from Paris; Northwest Airlines will codeshare on KLM and Malaysia Airlines flights; and United Airlines will codeshare with any of three Star Alliance partners - All Nippon Airways, Lufthansa, and Thai Airways International.
All will have access to Ho Chi Minh City and allow daily frequencies. Delta's codeshare also includes Hanoi.
American Airlines was the only US applicant excluded from these awards. American and Vietnam Airlines have, however, applied to codeshare directly on flights that connect in Paris.
American, Delta, and Northwest have also won new codeshare authority into China. Under the China-US bilateral agreement, nine Chinese cities became available in April for beyond-gateway codeshares. The DoT awarded seven in July, dividing them between the three US carriers. As the final step in the process, the DoT has allowed American and Delta each to pick one more city. It has excluded Northwest from this final choice because it already has "significantly more" service to China than the other two.
American has picked Nanning, to serve via its codeshare with China Eastern and Delta will serve Shenzhen through its partner, China Southern. Neither American nor Delta has rights to China on its own.
Meanwhile, Washington has forced American to suspend its codeshare with Asiana Airlines after the Federal Aviation Administration downgraded South Korea to category 2 under its safety assessment programme. DoT guidelines say that if a country is downgraded, "the impact on existing codeshare arrangements will be considered on a case-by-case basis." In fact, DoT regards the downgrade as automatic.
Source: Airline Business
