Delta Air Lines announced on Friday it suspended the carrier’s codeshare agreement with Aeroflot, a SkyTeam alliance airline 51% owned by the Russian Federation.
Delta said in a terse message:
Delta has withdrawn our codeshare services operated in conjunction with Russian national airline, Aeroflot, effective immediately.
We have removed our code from Aeroflot-operated services beyond Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and removed Aeroflot’s code from Delta-operated services from Los Angeles and New York-JFK. Accommodations will be made for customers affected by these changes.
Delta does not operate services to Ukraine or Russia.
This obviously doesn’t prevent Aeroflot from operating flights to/from the United States. That’s up to the US government.
Interesting fact: Vladimir Putin’s ex-wife was an Aeroflot flight attendant.
I’m curious how many people will be affected by this move. I’m sure some people booked Delta-marketed flights operated by Aeroflot and vice-versa. And it’ll be interesting to see what kind of financial impact this has on either airline.
Let’s hope this mess is over soon.
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Seems a bit glib to describe the tragedy unfolding in the Ukraine in terms of hoping this “mess” wil be over soon, in the context of a codeshare arrangement ending. Let’s instead hope that that the Russian’s fail in their coup attempt.
Except it’s in the context of an airline blog, not a world news commentary, don’t think he meant to trivialize it.
I am surprised that Delta has not suspended mileage accrual when flying Aeroflot.
This pretty much does it.
I don’t know. I have flown between Bulgaria and Armenia a few times and I flew Aeroflot because I wanted Delta accrual. I just used Google flights with the SkyTeam filter and looked at flights next week from LAX to Yerevan, and all the outbound options have at least one flight segment on Aeroflot. My choices departing LAX are KLM, Air France, and Aeroflot, and all those options can give me Delta accrual. In Delta’s announcement, they say “Accommodations will be made for customers affected by these changes.” My guess is that Delta just moves these passengers to other SkyTeam flights that probably include an Aeroflot segment. If I remove the SkyTeam filter Google flights, there are options to fly from LAX to Yerevan with flying on Aeroflot.
By the way, I see that the UK government has banned Aeroflot, but I do not think the US has yet.