SkyTeam
partners Air France and China Southern Airlines
on Tuesday signed an
agreement to operate a joint venture between the two carriers' hubs that they
expect to go into effect on Nov. 1.
The agreement Air France-KLM CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon and China Southern
president and CEO Tan Wan Geng
signed in Paris on Tuesday calls for the two carriers to share revenues on flights between Paris Charles de Gaulle and Guangzhou Baiyun airports,
with plans to introduce codeshare agreements on connecting destinations beyond
those two hubs. The two carriers already operate under a codeshare agreement for
Air France's three weekly and China Southern's four
weekly flights on the route.
The two carriers will share governance of the
joint venture, which calls for a management committee to be implemented "with
five working groups in charge of implementing the joint venture agreements in
the fields of network management, revenue management, sales, products and
finance," the carriers said. The agreement follows a similar joint venture operated
since June 2006 by KLM and China Southern between Amsterdam and Beijing.