Abstract
First, we have to define what a "strategic alliance" is. A strategic alliance is a contractual agreement among organizations to combine their efforts and resources to meet a common goal, or an agreement between two or more partners to share knowledge or resources which could be beneficial to all parties. Several events forced the creation of strategic alliances among airlines, the main ones being legislative, others due to the competition against low-cost carriers and finally ones that were just a natural strategic step of previous agreements. Which is may be the first development in the late 70s until the early 2000's, is the deregulation of the airline industry that led airline companies to set up an alliance. Airline companies were allowed to operate domestic flights in other countries and on this fact, partnerships were created in order to widen their destination networks. Bilateral agreement was another legislation that helped strategic alliances. It prevented national carriers in organizing additional services abroad. "Code-sharing" is the way that airline companies found to get around this restriction. It's enabled them to advertise the flights of other airlines as their own. This practice is still in use as it permits two airlines to set the same flight and therefore make this flight appear two or more times, increasing its chances of being chosen by a travel agency.
