American Airlines and Alaska Airlines have jointly filed with the U.S. Department of Transportation to expand their current marketing cooperation and codeshare relationship.

Alaska has had its “AS” code on approximately 600 of American’s flights and has had a reciprocal frequent flyer agreement with American since 1999. Under the terms of the codeshare expansion, American will place its code on approximately 450 flights operated by Alaska Airlines and its regional partner, Horizon Air, while Alaska’s code will now be placed on approximately 1,000 American-operated flights.

American and Alaska are planning the first phase of new codesharing to begin in early February 2004, pending approval by the DOT.

The Alaska/Horizon flights with the “AA” code will be within the western United States and Pacific Northwest, an area of the country where American has a limited presence, and on select Alaska-operated transcontinental services. Alaska will place its code on flights operated by American in the western U.S. mainland and to and from Hawaii; on select American transcontinental flights; on American’s services from the West Coast to AA’s mid-continent hubs; and on select flights beyond AA hubs — all areas where Alaska has a limited number of flights.