The interline agreement between Delta Air Lines and American Airlines resumes on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 after Delta Air Lines had discontinued it on Tuesday, September 15, 2015 — which is two years, four months and nine days ago — according to multiple sources.
Interline Agreement Between Delta Air Lines and American Airlines Resumes as of January 24, 2018?
One of those sources is the Twitter feed of FlyerTalk member JonNYC, who has a reputation for delivering reliable information pertaining to American Airlines:
good news: @AmericanAir and @Delta restoring IRROPS protection/interline ticketing agreement: pic.twitter.com/Sn1w0mQ3PY
— ˜”*° JonNYC °*”˜ (@xJonNYC) January 24, 2018
“Thanks to employees’ stellar operational performance, Delta customers enjoy an industry-leading experience. Unfortunately, we couldn’t reach an agreement with American that adequately address the number of IROPs customers that American transferred to us,” Eric Phillips — who is the senior vice president of revenue management for Delta Air Lines — said in an official statement when explaining why the interline agreement with American Airlines was discontinued. “In July, for example, American sent passengers to Delta for reaccommodation at a five-to-one ratio. At that rate the industry agreement was no longer mutually beneficial.”
Since that statement was released, Delta Air Lines has suffered from a number of significant operational issues — including but not limited to an information technology meltdown which brought the airline to its figurative knees for several days in August of 2016; a significant weather event in April of 2017 from which almost a week elapsed until the operations of Delta Air Lines finally fully recovered; and the fire on Sunday, December 17, 2017 which caused an electrical power failure and completely halted operations at the international airport which serves the greater Atlanta metropolitan area for almost twelve hours.
Edward Bastian — who is the chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines — announced several days later that the airline was seeking up to $50 million as repayment for the losses incurred as a result of that power outage.
Summary
A interline agreement — which is also known as interlining, interline ticketing, or interline booking — between individual commercial airlines allows passengers who are traveling on itineraries which require multiple flights on multiple airlines to change from one flight on one airline to another flight on another airline without having to gather their bags or check in once again at the ticket counter. This completely voluntary agreement is especially useful and helpful when one airline is suffering from irregular operations and another airline is available to transport passengers.
Interline agreements are beneficial for passengers because the agreements help get them on their way to their destinations significantly faster during irregular operations — and as an added bonus, passengers have been known to collect miles from the frequent flier loyalty programs of both airlines for the same flight as a result.
Other sources of the unconfirmed news of the interline agreement reusing between Delta Air Lines and American Airlines include this discussion on FlyerTalk and this discussion at Airliners.net.
At the time this article was written, no official announcement was released from either airline pertaining to this news — hence the question mark in the title of this article — but look for official confirmation from at least one of the airlines within the next 24 hours.
Photograph ©2017 by Brian Cohen.
