United und US Airways arbeiten zusammen.

[Andie007]

US Airways Continues Restructuring Efforts; Announces Marketing Agreement

With United Airlines

ARLINGTON, Va., July 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- US Airways President and

CEO David Siegel today announced that US Airways has reached an agreement on

a marketing alliance with United Airlines. Since receiving conditional

approval for a federal loan guarantee and reaching tentative agreements with

several employee groups, the code sharing agreement is the latest of several

steps the airline has taken to implement a financial restructuring and new

business plan.

 

"A marketing agreement has always been a vital piece of our plan, and it was

a key component of the loan guarantee application conditionally approved by

the Air Transportation Stabilization Board," said Siegel. "Finalizing labor

agreements and negotiating with lenders and lessors remain the critical

elements of our restructuring, while this alliance will provide our airline

with the revenue and marketing enhancements that are already enjoyed by our

competitors."

 

Siegel said that he could not predict when US Airways' restructuring efforts

would be concluded, but that the agreement takes into account either a

negotiated restructuring of US Airways or one supervised under a Chapter 11

filing.

 

The agreement will be submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Once implemented, US Airways and United passengers will be able to:

 

 

* Access US Airways' network in the Eastern U.S. and the Caribbean, but

also now enjoy significantly easier access to cities in the West,

Europe and Asia served by United

 

* Make connections between both airlines on a single reservation

through

new streamlined ticketing, baggage handling, and check-in procedures

 

* Earn and redeem frequent flyer miles on each other's airline

 

* Use each airline's airport lounges if they are already a member of

either

 

 

"We have repeatedly said a marketing agreement should significantly boost

our revenues by giving us reach to more markets and enabling us to offer our

customers more choices and greater convenience," said Siegel. "As

demonstrated by similar agreements between other airlines, an expanded

network and the traffic feed from United will provide us with more

passengers, higher load factors and more revenue. Since our restructuring

plan involves strategic steps to increase revenues to allow us to become

profitable and to repay the federal loan guarantee, we believe it is

critical that we implement proven business initiatives like this one in

order to accomplish those objectives."

 

Siegel noted that marketing alliances have been a proven means to boosting

revenue in the industry. "The industry trend has been to broaden competition

to include not just airline-versus-airline competition, but broader

alliance- versus-alliance competition as well. In the past, US Airways lost

business to competitors because we lacked domestic and international scope

and marketing partners who can feed traffic onto our network."

 

US Airways and United will remain separate competing companies with separate

schedules, pricing, and sales functions. In addition, unlike some existing

airline alliances, there is no equity ownership element between US Airways

and United. The two airlines will independently set prices and establish

schedules, and they will continue to compete on all routes served by one

another.