I know some people in the pass bureau who are working very hard on that! Basically you attend a forum once (maybe twice?) a year to negotiate reciprocal agreements, and it has to be in the interest of both airlines. I hear at the moment it is a bit thin on the ground for agreements with asian carriers?
I know we used to have an agreement but it got suspended. I think the issue is a lot of foreign airlines would say OK, Southwest has a good network, but the spider network creates complexities in ticketing, and how many of our staff are going to use it when they can get on an allliance carrier direct from one of their intl destinations? For example I'm not sure how one would buy a ZED LAXDAL on WN...would you have to issue LAXABQ-ABQDAL, LAXHOU-HOULAX? Southwest has a lot of variables that other airlines don't have I guess. But I still fly them whenever I can
Longest nonrev I did on them was back in 07... DAL-HOU-ELP-LAX-OAK!
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