American's new service to Brussels

American Airlines in cooperation with codeshare partner SN Brussels Airlines is to begin a new daily nonstop service to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport from Brussels. American, the world’s largest airline already provides daily nonstop service to Chicago O’Hare International Airport from Brussels. Services to New York begin in May 2004.

With the new service American expands its relationship with SN Brussels Airlines. Belgium’s premier international airline will place its own airline code on the new flight. American and SN Brussels currently have a codesharing agreement on the Chicago to Brussels flight and on connecting service via Brussels to key business and leisure destinations throughout Europe and Western Africa. Frequent flyers can earn mileage credits and redeem award travel under American’s AADVANTAGE and SN Brussels’ Privilege program whenever flying on services operated by the other carrier

“This additional transatlantic service from Brussels underlines American’s commitment to our European customers and builds on our already successful partnership with SN Brussels,” said Craig Kreeger newly appointed Vice President Europe & Asia for American Airlines. “Our New York JFK service adds another important US gateway for passengers originating in Belgium or joining American’s transatlantic flights from the many connecting services offered by our partner, SN Brussels, across Europe and Africa.”
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It is better for SNBA to have a code-share agreement in place of actually operating services to the US itself, keeping a high yield service to Africa rather than emerging into the competitive American market, leaving the work to American who have a sort of strategy for trans-Atlantic services. SNBA maintains it would rather focus on individual agreements with other airlines, however, a hole in Oneworld’s African network plus code-share agreements with many of the alliances current members, suggests to me that in the future that maybe they could be interested in joining.