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American Airlines and Delta have revived their interline agreement, which allows Delta to book passengers on American and vice versa. The news leaked via Twitter user JonNYC.
Their original interline agreement was discontinued in 2015 at the behest of Delta after it became clear that the agreement was not working for them since American leveraged the agreement booking 5 displaced/re-accommodated passengers on Delta metal for every passenger Delta booked on American metal.
What Is An Interline Agreement?
An interline agreement is the lowest form of cooperation between airlines. It is designed to facilitate and smooth out the experience for passengers when their flights are delayed or canceled. With an interline agreement airlines can do the following:
- One airline can book its delayed or canceled passengers directly on to a flight with the other airline
- Crucially for passengers, they do not have to collect their bags and re-check them in. The bags are transferred from one airline to the other behind the scenes
While interline agreements don’t tend to be very valuable at major hubs with high flight frequency, they can be very important at smaller airports which have a lower frequency of flights, and when getting a stranded traveler to their destination could involve significant delay.
Our Take
It is great that this agreement has been revived since it can only help to improve the experience of passengers who are inconvenienced by delay or cancelations. Interestingly according to Reuters, the agreement was revived after Delta reached out to American.
This is a case of what goes around comes around. Since Delta canceled the deal with American a couple of years ago, it has had several major disruptions, where an interline agreement could have saved Delta from needing to eat crow.
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Source: The Gate
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Haha at Delta and their hubris.
Great news for the both AA and DL passengers!
good-this has been a lifesaver in the past for me personally.
am interested in how they brought safeguards in to avoid the disagreements that happenedbefore?
anyone with info on th details?
Nice thought!! Also just noticed that DAL now has the A350 in their fleet!
It is a shame this isn’t a proper code share, although of course that would never happen.
N E V E R G O N N A H A P P E N!!!
Having been rebooked at least 5 times in this manner in the past year this is absolutely huge. Thanks for the heads up!
Another step in the right direction for the customer I think. Nice.
Agreed. It’s a real, quality solution to problems that inevitably arise.
Hope I don’t need to be booked on the other airline very often but good to know it’s an option!
That’s great. This should do better for IRROPs!
Funny how things work out
Great news. This really saved me once. AA major delay. Put me home on DA international flight as well.
Interline agreements should be mandated by law or regulation.
Agreed!
Good call, finally something good happens for passengers after all of that stuff which happened 2017
Hope Delta’s enjoying that humble pie
It’s about time if you ask me. Granted I can’t fault Delta for wanting to renegotiate if they were only putting 1 person on AA vs AA putting 5 on them.
I really find stuff like this interesting. I am a loyal AA flyer (but in my opinion Delta has a better product and a better operation – you can disagree that’s fine) but when Delta did this two years ago it seemed kind of neighborly to me and a little arrogant.. I gotta say,, after several very public and very bad Delta meltdowns (at least one of which wasn’t their fault) I immediately wondered how wide the smile was on Parker’s face.
good news, esp. for the approaching busy summer travel season.
I find it very interesting that DL found themselves lacking at some point and then came currying favor again with AA.
This is definitely good news! Thanks!
Now, this throws me! Isn’t AA’s agreement with United?
They have agreements with both.
This is very important to me since I fly into a small airport. I seem to miss my connections through O’Hare relatively often. It’s nice to know that re-booking on Delta will be again possible. I find it very helpful to have an alternate flight in mind to suggest to the agent when re-booking. Saving them some effort sometimes makes the agent more willing to make the alternate booking.
It seems that Delta came crawling back after so many problems in recent storms
Hopefully, it won’t be something that affects me, but it’s good for the airlines to have this option available.
This has already helped people on my BWI-PHX flight two days ago who would have mis-connected if the agents couldn’t have rebooked some of the passengers.
Thank you for the info. And the tip of the day!