Understanding Interline Agreements for International Flights

You would have heard of the terms such as ‘interline agreements’, ‘codeshare’, ‘alliances’ and ‘joint ventures’ with respect to airlines. However, it is the interline agreements which are the most basic types of agreements which an airline company can have with another airline. All other types of agreements are of higher order, entailing a lot more in their partnerships than that exists in interline arrangement.

An interline agreement is way of cooperation among airlines that enables them to handle each other’s passengers in the best possible way. There could be, and there certainly are, points on which this cooperation is to be extended. For instance, there could be an interline agreement between airlines to allow online ticket booking for the other airline from their own search engines. Similarly, there could be an interline agreement for handling the baggage and providing through check-in to a passenger baggage. Likewise, there could be an agreement to fly one another’s passengers when the schedule of any carrier becomes erratic. Therefore, these agreements can cover a number of specific services.

These agreements are generally signed for international flight operations of the airlines, and with the foreign carriers. These can even be signed among the domestic players but there are less examples to quote in this respect. There existed an interline agreement between American and Delta airlines, two of the biggest airlines in USA. The agreement was to extend rebooking help to the other airline passengers in case of irregular schedules. However, this agreement was discarded later on due to lack of trust and of the belief that the other airline was not helping passengers to the same extent as this one. So, the competitive urges takes the better of cooperation which is the basis of this sort of cooperation.

These agreements are signed in order to reduce the hassles for the passengers and making air travel a trouble-free experience. The other types of agreements are to be discussed on other posts.