American Airlines Seeks China Southern Tie-Up as Traffic Booms -<br />By NEIL GOUGHMARCH 27, 2017<br />HONG KONG — American Airlines is looking to become the second big carrier in the United States<br />to buy its way into capturing more of the big and growing business of flying to China.<br />As a result, foreign carriers “try to work around this, and one way is to invest in a Chinese carrier and hopefully gain market access<br />that way,” said Ms. Png, the transportation industry analyst.<br />If one materializes, a deal would tie American, one of the United States’ big<br />three carriers, together with one of China’s big three state-run airlines.<br />But a deal could help American capture more traffic between the United States and China through arrangements like code sharing, an industry term for a partnership<br />that allows two airlines to more easily book passengers on each other’s flights.<br />Today, Chinese airlines account for more than 60 percent of assigned flight routes between China<br />and the United States, said Corrine Png, a longtime transport industry analyst in Singapore.
