Delta Air Lines will deepen its collaboration with China Eastern Airlines virtually to the point of essentially becoming ‘a single airline.’
"You’ll be able to fly from any city that China Eastern serves in China to any city Delta serves in the US," Delta CEO Richard Anderson said.
"In essence we’ll run a single airline, even though there are two airlines involved."
The joint venture between the airlines will encompass code sharing, revenue management functions, flight scheduling, sales and marketing and loyalty memberships.
It comes after Delta agreed to invest $450 million for a 3% stake in China Eastern in July.
China is a crucial market for Delta and is projected to overtake the US as the world’s biggest market within 20 years.
Delta currently flies daily to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong and has a hub in Tokyo, Japan.
"When you think about how big Asia is, more than one hub can certainly be supported commercially," Anderson said.
"Our real focus now for growth is Shanghai, because China has really surpassed Japan as the growth engine of Asia."
