WestJet to Defer on Renewing Delta Joint Venture

Canada’s second airline, WestJet, plans to go it alone when it comes to US flights and not renew its plans for a transborder joint venture with Delta Air Lines. “We are happy with what we are doing, and we haven’t decided to take any decision on potentially refiling a joint venture,” WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech told Airline Weekly in an interview. “We are happy with what we have, and [will] take it from there.” That’s a break from past WestJet management teams that had expressed plans to resubmit an application for antitrust immunity with Delta on U.S.-Canada flights. The airlines dropped their initial plans for a joint venture in November 2020 after the U.S. Department of Transportation made divesting eight slot pairs at New York’s LaGuardia airport — the total held by WestJet — a condition to approval. In their response, the airlines called the condition “onerous” in part because it provided no guarantee that the divested slots would be used to expand competition on LaGuardia-Canada routes. WestJet’s decision not to get closer to Delta comes even as its main competitor, Air Canada, has forged closer ties with United. Air Canada and United implemented a joint venture late last year that the former’s CFO Amos Kazzaz said in March was already “surpassing expectations.” The two Star Alliance carriers are able to do everything WestJet and Delta cannot under their codeshare, including “the ability to price together, manage inventory and so forth” on US-Canada routes, as Kazzaz put it. WestJet and Delta’s lack of a joint venture puts them at a competitive disadvantage to Air Canada and United. Without antitrust immunity, they can only codeshare on U.S.-Canada flights and offer things like reciprocal loyalty benefits.<br/>