Alaska Airlines has assembled a global sales partnership network in which it will sell discounts on eight carrier partners to its corporate customers. The network includes four transpacific carriers—Hainan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and Fiji Airways—and four transatlantic carriers—Aer Lingus, El Al, Icelandair and German airline Condor, said Alaska VP of sales David Oppenheim.
All eight carriers already are among Alaska's global partner network, through which travelers can earn and use Mileage Plan miles on flights. "One of our limitations from a corporate sales perspective is that we are a North American airline, and for your North American travel, we can offer great utility," Oppenheim said. "While our mileage programs have had these global programs for a long time, for a corporate buyer, we haven't been able to offer anything, and now we can."
The discounts, at least for now, are not reciprocal; Cathay Pacific, for example, will not offer corporate customers discounts on Alaska flights, as Alaska's point of sale outside North America is relatively small, he said. That could be "something we want to explore in the future." Additional global partners also are possible, Oppenheim said. Initial partners were selected to provide global coverage, not to poach those already in joint ventures with competing North American carriers.
"If you put together the size of those airlines and compare it with the JVs in the market today, it's more than half of the size of those international JVs," Oppenheim said. "We're not the biggest, and we don't have the deepest integration like codesharing on all flights or metal neutrality, but it really changes us from being a West Coast-focused airline to being able to provide utility and discounts for corporate accounts globally.