Two of Latin America's Largest Airlines to Merge – (Sort Of)
Saturday, August 14, 2010 at 3:56PM LAN Airlines of Chile, and Tam Airlines of Brazil announced that they will be merging in a similar fashion to KLM and Air France. On the surface of the two airlines will remain separate in branding and route structure, while merging management, cargo flight operations and aircraft orders in an effort to save money in an industry that has lost billions.
While this airline merging is certainly not unique, considering the recent merger of Delta with Northwest and United with Continental, these two South American airlines belong in completely separate alliances – what is going to happen to their membership in the OneWorld alliance for LAN, and the Star Alliance for Tam?
The upper management of both alliances are surely holding their breaths: if LAN Airlines pulls out of the One World alliance and joins the Star Alliance, or vice versa, the landscape of airline alliances will have changed dramatically. In fact, it may mean that airlines as we know it are irrelevant – if in effect a single carrier has 1 foot in 2 alliances.
There are rumors that the airlines may be joining Sky Team, or even forming a new alliance altogether.
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