Originally Posted by
Mesabah
UAL has been a widebody airline for as long as anyone can remember. Will Delta get like that..... in the post Covid world, it's anyone's guess. Prior to Covid, if you went over to the flyertalk forums, our HVC's preferred being placed on a foreign carrier for international, and Delta liked being a ticket broker, while booking profits on airline investments.
As far as the history of scope, prior to the 1990's, airlines had unlimited codeshare ability, as it isn't restricted by the NMB. Protections were fought for in the following years. You'll never get a clear answer of what exactly happened in those years, so it's best to focus on the future.
The 1980s wasn’t that long ago. Prior to that UAL had some WB domestic flying and mainland to Hawaii, that was basically it.
UALs international WB really took off when they picked up pieces from PanAm, including their entire Pacific ops, their LHR routes and their stuff down to South America. That all happened in the 80’s.