Nearly two years after American Airlines acquired a minority stake in regional carrier JetSmart, the two companies announced Monday a strategic alliance with the sale of flights between the United States and Chile, where JetSmart has its regional hub.
It is a codeshare agreement that aims to combine American Airlines routes between Chile and the United States with JetSmart's regional flights. Codeshare means that either airline can sell the combined route they share as their own.
In addition to the routes, the alliance will also give access (only towards the end of the year) to American's mileage program for JetSmart customers, although the modality is pending definition. And it confirms that American enters as a minority partner of JetSmart.
"The alliance includes an extensive route network, as well as medium-term access for JetSMART customers to American Airlines' AAdvantage® loyalty program. It also involves a minority investment by American in JetSMART, which will help drive the company's development in South America," said a statement issued Monday by JetSmart.
The alliance between the two companies has been in effect since June 1 and tickets are already on sale, with a start date for June 15. At this stage, they will connect only JetSmart routes in four points in Chile: Santiago, Antofagasta, Concepción and Puerto Montt. In the coming weeks the tickets will be made available to travelers from other regions of Chile and also from Peru, the company added.
And Argentina? According to the statement, "In Argentina, more codeshare routes will be added, upon obtaining government approval." There is no set timetable for that stage, JetSmart spokespeople said. "Requests for the new routeshave not yet been submitted to the authorities," they added.
American Airlines and JetSmart had signed at the end of July 2021 a letter of intent according to which the US airline was going to enter as a minority shareholder of the regional "low cost", which is owned by the US investment fund Indigo Partners.
During the almost two years that have passed, there has been no further progress on this issue, but in parallel the two airlines intensified their activity in the region and also in Argentina.
American Airlines today has, depending on the season, between 28 and 35 weekly flights from cities in the United States to Ezeiza airport.
JetSmart, meanwhile, has subsidiaries in Chile, Peru and Argentina, with 80 regional destinations. The local subsidiary operates domestic flights from the metropolitan airport, and also operates international flights from Ezeiza to Santiago de Chile, Rio de Janeiro, Asunción del Paraguay and Lima.
Shortly before the pandemic, in September 2019, American had been left without its strategic partner in Latin America, the airline LATAM. It was after LATAM partnered with Delta, another U.S. airline, thata nearly three-decade commercial alliance between American and LATAM was broken through the One World mileage system, involving several other airlines around the world.
As soon as flights resumed after the pandemic, American came out to announce the letter of intent with JetSmart. And also announced was the other crucial step, confirmed yesterday, that JetSmart passengers will be able to access, in the medium term, American's AAdvantage mileage system. According to the statement, that option will be in place "by the end of 2023."
However, JetSmart will not go on to form the One World alliance, but the alliance will be limited to the mileage shared with American.
The statement says nothing about what the fine print of that latest agreement will look like. Will a passenger on domestic flights from JetSmart Argentina be able to earn miles that can then be used for American flights? For the moment, according to JetSmart spokesmen, we will have to wait for both parties to move forward on new definitions.
