Final Approval to Form American Airlines and Qantas Joint Business is Received

American Airlines welcomes the U.S. Department of Transportation’s final approval of a joint business agreement with Qantas. American and Qantas now have the opportunity to jointly offer more products that will better serve customers flying between the United States and Australia and New Zealand. This has been a longstanding business objective of the partnership.

“We look forward to working closely with our valued partner, Qantas, on this new joint business,” said American’s Chairman and CEO Doug Parker. “We now have the opportunity to launch new routes and provide enhanced service with better schedules, additional frequent flyer benefits and continued investments in the overall customer experience. We are grateful to Secretary Chao and the DOT team, as we welcome this fantastic news for our customers and team members.”

Final approval of the joint business allows for commercial integration between the carriers, delivering new routes and significant customer benefits not possible through any other form of cooperation, including:

• The opportunity to launch new routes and flights to new destinations, including city pairs not currently served by either carrier.
• An expanded codeshare relationship and optimized schedules on trans-Pacific services, opening up more connections to more destinations and reduced total travel time.
• Better access to seats on each carrier’s network, leading to lower fares.
• Additional frequent flyer benefits by further integrating the carriers’ programs, including higher earn rates for points on each other’s networks beyond what is possible today through oneworld, as well as increased redemption opportunities and improved reciprocal end-to-end recognition of our top-tier frequent flyers.
• Co-location at airports and investments in lounges, baggage systems and other infrastructure designed to better serve the carriers’ joint customers.

Qantas and American flagged an intention to launch several new routes within the first two years of the proposed joint business. Qantas expects to announce details of two new routes — Brisbane, Australia (BNE)–Chicago (ORD) and BNE–San Francisco (SFO) — as final approval is received.