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On Monday, a Gol flight from São Paulo Guarulhos airport to Minas Gerais in Brazil took off but wound up diverting back to São Paulo due to weather.
Passengers got frustrated with a lack of help getting rebooked, and facing spending the night where they started. And they started to riot.
After American Airlines lost its pending joint venture with South American mega-carrier to Delta, they’ve been working to piece together new partnerships. They quickly partnered with Brazil’s Gol, which Delta was forced to walk away from in order to do their LATAM deal.
This morning they’ve announced a deepening of their relationship with the Brazilian airline.
Gol, the American Airlines partner in Brazil, says it is changing the schedule of every one of its flights in April and customers have to rebook.
Thanks to a year-old partnership, if you want to buy a ticket from American Airlines to go beyond their destinations in Brazil you’ll generally fly to South America on American and connect to your final destination on Gol. One passenger tried to fly Gol to
São Paulo, connecting to American Airlines on an American Airlines ticket, and wound up in a confrontation with police in the middle of Gol’s ticketing office in São Luís.
Gol first insisted the U.S. citizen required a Green Card to travel to the United States, and then that American Airlines had Covid-19 test requirements that differed from the CDC’s. In the end though it was flying on an American Airlines codeshare that really fouled things up.
The airline industry makes for strange bedfellows.
Delta is rushing to save a key American Airlines partner, because that keeps it from being on the hook to repay the loan they guaranteed. However if they fail they will take partial ownership in Gol’s frequent flyer program, a key American Airlines partnership.
Let’s mix metaphors for a second. After a game of airline partner musical chairs in South America, everyone is solidifying the relationship with their new dance partner.
Delta began mileage earning and redemption with LATAM a month ago and just signed their joint venture agreement. Now American Airlines has introduced frequent flyer reciprocity with new partner Gol, based in Brazil, which Delta used to own a stake in.
American has announced a new codeshare relationship with Gol as well as frequent flyer partnership and an expansion at their Miami hub including to Latin America.
Gol wasn’t a great partner for Delta, which doesn’t have a huge presence in Brazil and so the opportunities to feed Delta flights were limited. Gol is a much better partner for American, which serves four cities from Brazil and flies to the country from four of its hubs.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
