Alaska Airlines-Condor codeshare agreement grows

The German carrier Condor has begun placing its code on more than 70 Alaska Airlines routes.

The new codeshares represent the latest enhancement in the long-standing partnership between Condor and Alaska and make their codeshare arrangement bilateral. In June, Alaska began placing its code on Condor flights from 12 U.S. gateways to that carrier’s Frankfurt hub. 

The moves followed Condor’s unveiling of its first lie-flat business-class seats early this year.

“Nobody could be happier than us seeing Condor evolve into the airline they are today,” said Nat Pieper, Alaska’s senior vice president of fleet, finance and alliances. “We are over the moon. They’ll be a really big part of our strategy going forward.” 

Condor’s 12 U.S. destinations this summer were New York JFK, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Las Vegas, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Portland, Phoenix, Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska.  

The airline will add summer Miami and San Antonio service next year.

The 70-plus Alaska domestic routes on which Condor is now codesharing operate from Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, Anchorage and Boise, Idaho. 

New planes, new seats

The airlines have been inter-line partners for more than a decade. And since 2017, Alaska Mileage Plan members have been able to accrue and redeem frequent flyer points on Condor flights. 

Pieper, as well as Condor director of sales for the Americas Mikko Turtiainen, said that under the new codeshare relationship, flyers will be able to more easily shop and book joint Alaska-Condor itineraries, both via the GDSs and in direct channels. Especially important, they said, is that such itineraries can now be issued on one ticket, rather than two.

Alaska’s decision to step-up its partnership with Condor is closely related to the aircraft upgrade the historically leisure-centric airline introduced early this year when it put its first Airbus A330neos into service, Pieper said. 

Next summer, Condor will fly only A330neos, all of which will offer 30 lie-flat business-class seats and 65 premium economy seats, along with an economy cabin. The A330s are replacing Condor’s fleet Boeing 767s, which had business-class cabins, but without the lie-flat seats that are now an industry standard. 

Turtiainen touted those new aircraft as he discussed the burgeoning Alaska-Condor partnership. 

“You have to forget the experience of the Condor of before,” he said. “It’s a completely different type of experience that we are offering over the Atlantic. It gets the adrenaline going.”

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