Continental to join Star, link with United

photo by sea turtle

Even after merger talks between United and Continental fell through a few months ago, the two airlines are still interested in cooperating - yesterday, they announced plans to start codesharing and for Continental to join Star Alliance, of which United is a member. According to an email sent out to Mileage Plus members, United expects the deal to start sometime in 2009.

It remains to be seen what this means for US Airways, which has been a Star member for a few years now. It's possible that it could remain in Star, but having three US airlines in the same alliance could lead to some overlap.

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AiRUnion moves towards Star as S7 joins oneworld

Lufthansa announced on Wednesday that it will begin codesharing with the Russian airline alliance AiRUnion, which is made up of the carriers Domodedovo Airlines, KrasAir, Omskavia, Samara Airlines, and Sibaviatrans. The deal will help Lufthansa, which serves eight cities within Russia, create domestic connections. Likewise, the AiRUnion carriers will have access to Lufthansa's international network.

While the deal doesn't make AiRUnion a member of Star Alliance, of which Lufthansa is a founding member, it does move the Russian alliance closer to Star. AiRUnion already codeshares with Star carrier Austrian Airlines on the Moscow-Vienna and Krasnoyarsk-Vienna routes.

Novosibirsk-based S7 Airlines, Russia's number-two carrier, also announced a few weeks ago that it was in talks with British Airways to join the oneworld alliance. Aeroflot, the country's largest airline, is already a member of SkyTeam. So because there are three major airlines/groups in Russia (Aeroflot, S7, AiRUnion) and there are three major world airline alliances (SkyTeam, oneworld, Star), it would make sense that AiRUnion will probably become a Star member in the coming months.

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