Five Carriers Decide to Fly in Formation

American Airlines and British Airways joined Monday with three other carriers in a marketing partnership that could one day grow to rival the industry’s top flight-sharing alliance, anchored by United Airlines and Lufthansa.

The latest super-alliance was launched as American and British Airways continue their fight to gain regulatory approval for a separate deal that would give them U.S. antitrust immunity to set prices on transatlantic routes.

Consumer experts said the partnership, called Oneworld--which includes Canadian Airlines, Australia’s Qantas and Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways--should have no short-term impact on fares.

Industry observers also said Monday that United and Lufthansa’s Star Alliance, which Oneworld aspires to copy, has had no discernible effect on ticket prices in the 16 months since it was launched.

“It hasn’t made for higher prices because there is still a lot of competition out there,” said Tom Parsons, publisher of Best Fares consumer newsletter.

The Oneworld partnership differs from the Star Alliance--which includes Air Canada, Scandinavian Airlines System, Thai Airways and the Brazilian carrier Varig--because the primary consumer impact of Oneworld will be to coordinate scheduling, ticketing and boarding pass issuance among its member airlines, said American spokesman Chris Chiames. Some frequent-flier programs will also be shared.

In addition, the pact provides for joint marketing under the Oneworld logo. Chiames likened the agreement to a shopping mall where individual stores chip in for mall-wide advertising and amenities.

Chiames said Oneworld members eventually hope to match the Star Alliance in offering across-the-board “code sharing,” in which airlines agree to list the flights of another airline as their own, sell tickets for each other and share revenue. Besides the Star Alliance, other high-profile code-sharing arrangements include that between Northwest Airlines and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

Alliances are becoming increasingly common in the airline industry, as air travel continues to grow. Leading carriers realized long ago it wasn’t feasible to become big enough to cover the entire globe single-handedly.

American currently has code-sharing pacts with Qantas and Canadian but not British Airways or Cathy Pacific. The Oneworld pact, however, does not provide code sharing for all members; those relationships have to be worked out between participating airlines on their own, Chiames said.

James Ashurst, a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents, said pacts like Oneworld and Star do not automatically mean higher fares unless their members dominate individual markets.

“These alliances are something we are concerned with in terms of what it may mean for competition,” Ashurst said. “They do create the potential for . . . a limiting of options for consumers, which can invariably lead to higher prices.”

Yet so far that hasn’t happened, said Ada Brown, owner of Seaside Travel in Long Beach.

“I have not noticed air fares higher where United and Lufthansa fly or where Northwest and KLM fly,” she said. “There’s still a lot of competition out there. Competition is the determining factor on price.”

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Associated Press and Bloomberg News were used in compiling this report.