When Continental leaves SkyTeam this fall, it won’t join Star Alliance the next day. Rather, there will be a period of transition as the airline shifts from one global airline alliance to another.
“With our final flight on 24 October, we will leave SkyTeam,” said outgoing Continental CEO Larry Kellner. “We will be in Star just as fast as we can be after that. We just can’t do anything until we get out of SkyTeam to jointly market with Star partners. It won’t be seamless; it will be a couple days in transition.”
Extracting itself from SkyTeam for Continental involves ending loyalty program and airport lounge reciprocity with Air France, Delta, KLM, Northwest and other soon-to-be former allies.
It also requires ending codeshare flights and joint corporate programs. On the former, some code shares with Delta and Northwest already have been discontinued, Kellner said, and “all drop off [by] the end of July.” On the latter, he acknowledged that “we have some joint contracts, but we don’t think that’s a significant risk for us. It’s a very small risk.”
How much time passes between the wind-down of the old partnerships and the initiation of the new ones is another open question.
The transition period may be a bumpy one for Continental loyalists — or for those planning on flying Continental and hoping for benefits via one alliance or the other. Stay tuned.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Twitter Comment
#Travel –
When Continental leaves SkyTeam this fall, it won’t join Star Alliance the next day. Rather,.. [link to post]
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July 23rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
the short term pain of messy transition is well worth the long time gain of joining the alliance of SQ/NH/LH. With the mergers of AF-KL and DL-NW, SkyTeam has degenerated into a duopoly, with the rest of the alliance treated as second class citizens whenever there’s a conflict of interest with the 2 lead airlines, which is essentially reverting to the good ol’ NW-KL relationship. Why stay in a bottom-feeder alliance when Star gives them a chance to shine?
July 25th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
I think that midget plane in the picture is about to crash.
July 25th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
RJP, I take it you’re not familiar with the rather interesting landings and takeoffs at Tegucigalpa – Toncontin in Honduras?
August 5th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
nice photo! ))
August 10th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
I’d rather hear the bad news warnings up front than to see them try to do a quick switchover and blow it completely. And as noted above, the end result will produce far more options for Continental fliers internationally. Skyteam is looking pretty skimpy now.