Alaska Airlines and American Airlines are moving to expand their codesharing relationship. Alaska also partners with Continental and Northwest, as well as Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Hawaiian, KLM, LanChile, and British Airways.

Normally I’d just interpret this as an expansion of their broad partnerships across the board. One item struck me, though.

Alaska and American, which since 1999 have had reciprocal frequent flyer programs, also plan to co-locate certain airport facilities “wherever possible.”

If “wherever possible” just means where they aren’t colocated with, say, Northwest then this would be nothing new. But does it signal that Alaska is becoming closer to American, to the exclusion of its other partners?