Following an earlier interlining announcement in October 2010, WestJet and American Airlines have announced a new code share agreement between the two airlines. The agreement will allow each airline to place their codes on the other airlines flights. At this point this means American customers will be able to connect to up to 20 cities in Canada that AA or American Eagle does not serve while WestJet customers will be able to fly on WestJet coded American Airlines flights from Canada to Boston and Chicago. Future arrangements should see the WestJet place their codes on American flights to more cities.
For our readers, the biggest perk here is the reciprocal frequent flyer benefits in the agreement. This means members of either airlines frequent flyer programs will be able to earn AAdvantage miles or WestJet dollars on the code share flights. What is unknown at this time is whether you have to fly a connecting flight on your actual airline to earn miles/dollars or if you will be able to earn those miles for the code share flight only. In most other agreements as long as the flight has your main airline’s code then you get the miles/dollars but on some occasions some programs have made it more restrictive that you have to connect to/from a flight flown with your airlines own metal. Hopefully that will not be the case here as they may attract a few more business customers to the WestJet frequent guest program primarily out east with the numerous flights that AA has from Eastern Canada to Boston and Chicago.
Source: WestJet