Delta and Air France-KLM on Wednesday revealed details of a more enhanced, long-term joint venture.
The companies plan to better coordinate their transatlantic operations. Air France-KLM and Delta will share revenue and costs on transatlantic routes.
The airlines say they have the required government approvals.
Delta, which signed a joint-venture agreement with Air France in 2007, has since merged with Northwest, which already had a similar agreement with KLM dating back to 1997.
The new agreement establishes a single transatlantic joint venture that combines and tweaks the existing pacts under one agreement.
The airlines will cooperate on routes between North America and Africa, the Middle East and India as well as on flights between Europe and several countries in Latin America.
The joint venture represents about 25% of transatlantic capacity among all airlines. Delta, Air France and KLM have a combined annual revenue of about $12 billion for transatlantic services.
The joint venture covers about 200 flights and 50,000 seats daily, the airlines said.
The network is structured around six main hubs -- Amsterdam, Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York and Paris. Cincinnati, Memphis, Salt Lake City and Lyon, France, are are secondary hubs.
The joint venture’s geographic scope includes all flights between North America and Europe, between Amsterdam and India, and between North America and Tahiti.
Wherever traffic rights permit, and notably between the United States and the European Union, flights will be mutually code-shared.
"The structure of this joint venture, in which we operate as a single business where we consensually develop our strategies and share revenues and costs, provides the incentives for us to collaborate in a way that generates benefits for customers, shareholders and employees of our three airlines," said Delta CEO Richard Anderson.
"By optimizing the use of our pooled resources, this joint venture will help us weather the current economic situation and protect our product offering." said Air France-KLM CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon.
