Continental to Leave SkyTeam on October 24th
Jan 30th, 2009 | By Jared BlankContinental sent an email to frequent flyers last night letting them know that the airline will be leaving the SkyTeam alliance on October 24th. Theoretically they’ll be joining Star Alliance the next day (or so). I know that a lot of Continental flyers pooh-poohed SkyTeam (and are pretty excited about flying on Singapore in Star Alliance), but I found partner awards to be pretty readily available, with good coverage to most places. You won’t please everyone all the time, but between Air France, KLM, and Alitalia (of all things) you could nearly always get an award seat to Europe. Of course there were holes (hm….how do you get to Sydney? where are the lie-flat beds in business class?) but it was completely functional. And you’re goin to miss the upgrades on Northwest that seemed to always be available. That said, Lufthansa has a great product to Europe, and ANA & Singapore offer fantastic products to Asia. Seems like a win/win for Continental frequent flyers (once CO and United work out the upgrade situation).