United, Emirates and possible Star Alliance news in the offing

[jis]

United and Emirates will jointly announce a large code share agreement on Sept 14, 2022:

https://news.yahoo.com/united-airlines-emirates-set-announce-140714044.html
This together with recent similar agreements between a few other *A carriers and Emirates has led to speculation that Emirates may be on the verge of joining Star Alliance.This has been reported by the Points Guy:

https://thepointsguy.com/news/united-airlines-emirates-codeshare/
This follows on the heels of Qatar joining One World and entering into a comprehensive code share partnership with American recently.

If that happens I will have more than enough points to do a round trip to India in Emirates First Suite and then some. So fingers crossed. Hope it happens.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

If that happens I will have more than enough points to do a round trip to India in Emirates First Suite and then some. So fingers crossed. Hope it happens.

Star may have been the first but they also have the widest variation and fell into the earliest pitfalls. In order to keep the most attractive members happy Star was forced to weaken the links between partners and despite appearances to the contrary airlines with strong customer appeal are allowed to set their own rules and requirements. As a result some have set higher redemption requirements or simply blocked available seats from other programs. That said I do hope you are able to use your points the way you wish on the products you want and the joining process often provides the best opportunities.

 

[jis]

Star may have been the first alliance but they also fell into the first pitfalls. In order to keep their members happy they weakened the link between partners and despite appearances to the contrary airlines with strong customer appeal are allowed to set their own rules and requirements. As a result some will set higher redemption requirements or block available seats from other programs. That said I do hope you are able to use your points the way you wish on the products you want.

Actually in my experience unless the CRS systems and award systems are meaningfully linked on a bilateral basis, just being Star Alliance member may or may not mean much. That is why, what is exactly announced on the 14th is way more important than whether it involves *A membership or not.

For example, the link between United and Vistara is about as seamless as it can get and yet they do not even code share, but the through bookings using native flight numbers works better than many code shares I have had to suffer through. It is unfortunate, but how well a partnership works depends on the details more than on the marketing hype.

It apparently boils down to the CRS at the two ends. If the CRS is Amadeus at the partner end, United is able to hook seamlessly into it from its SHARES, since Amadeus is the chosen CRS platform for *A. But in India, Air India, a *A member, is still in the process of converting from SITA to Amadeus, while Vistara has been Amadeus from the get go, since they got it from Singapore Airlines.

 

[jis]

Apparently as a direct consequence of the upcoming Emirates-United linkup, Emirates and Jet Blue are ending their code share partnership effective October 30, 2022

https://www.aviacionline.com/2022/09/united-effect-jetblue-and-emirates-end-codeshare-partnership/

 

[Devil's Advocate]

If the CRS is Amadeus at the partner end, United is able to hook seamlessly into it from its SHARES, since Amadeus is the chosen CRS platform for *A. But in India, Air India, a *A member, is still in the process of converting from SITA to Amadeus, while Vistara has been Amadeus from the get go, since they got it from Singapore Airlines.

I was mainly thinking about how much award inventory Airline X would sell to Airline Y and at what cost rather than how easy and practical it was to find and use that inventory. In the early days of Star Alliance earning and redemption rules were more lenient even if the process for using them was more tedious.

Actually in my experience unless the CRS systems and award systems are meaningfully linked on a bilateral basis, just being Star Alliance member may or may not mean much. That is why, what is exactly announced on the 14th is way more important than whether it involves *A membership or not.

Agreed 100%.