Qantas is more than doubling the number of codeshare destinations it offers with Alaska Airlines as it boosts its reach into North America.
The two airlines will codeshare on 52 destinations from May 20, adding 27 city pairs to the 25 for which they already have an agreement.
The codeshares cover destinations as diverse as Hawaii and Mexico and mainly cover flights originating in San Francisco. The exceptions are Los Angeles-Newark, LA-Las Vegas and routes from Honolulu to Oakland, San Diego and San Jose.
They will connect to the Australian carrier’s existing Sydney-San Francisco service and to its Melbourne-San Francisco Boeing 787-9 flights when they start September 1.
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Qantas passengers will be able to earn and redeem points on the codeshare flights as well as have access to Alaska’s lounges where they are available.
Destinations include Honolulu, Maui and Kona in Hawaii as well as Puerto Vallarta and San Jose Del Cabo in Mexico.
US ports include Austin, Boston, Indianapolis, Orlando, Philadelphia and Salt Lake City.
Qantas is also evaluating direct services from Australia to Chicago using its growing fleet of Boeing 787-9s as well as flights from Brisbane to Seattle or Dallas.
Dallas and Chicago are both American hubs while Seattle is Alaska’s base.
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce told reporters after the recent historic first flight connecting Perth and London that the chosen service could start as soon as the end of the year.
How that pans out will likely depend on the airline’s bid to gain anti-trust immunity from the US Department of Transportation for its alliance with American Airlines.
The airlines have promised a range of lower fares and discounts if the alliance is approved but warned some US services may be reduced if it is not.
At risk, according to the airlines, is the Qantas Airbus A380 service between Sydney and Dallas-Fort Worth and American’s services between Los Angeles and Sydney and Auckland.
The original application foundered in 2016 when the US DoT issued the airlines with a tentative show cause order that proposed to the reject the application.
The proposed alliance had already been given a green light by regulators in Australia and New Zealand and the airlines at the time vowed to try again.
But the DoT concluded that the alliance would substantially reduce competition and consumer choice without producing counterbalancing public benefits.
