British Airways (BA, London Heathrow) and Iberia (IB/Madrid) have signed their merger agreement and are planning to complete the transaction by the end of 2010 after receiving approval from shareholders. The European Union has already approved the merger. The two carriers will continue to operate as separate carriers that will both be subsidiaries of International Airlines Group. BA shareholders will receive 56% of the stock in IAG with 44% being held by Iberia shareholders. IAG has been structured in a fashion where additional acquisitions and mergers would remain possible and British Airways has announced that it expects IAG to be actively looking at additional acquisition opportunities. In other good news, American Airlines (AA/Dallas/Fort Worth), British Airways, Finnair (AY/Helsinki), Iberia and Royal Jordanian (RJ/Amman Queen Alia) have been granted antitrust immunity by the US Department of Transportation and the European Commission allowing them to operate a joint venture and codeshare services on transatlantic services without restrictions. This is considered a major breakthrough for the oneworld alliance as AA and BA had so far not been able to fully cooperate on their key routes between the UK and US because authorities had denied them antitrust immunity several times because of the large percentage of traffic the two carriers would have controlled out of London Heathrow to the US. AA and BA have to give up slots in Gatwick and Heathrow as part of the deal though to allow other carriers to launch or add flights to Boston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Miami and New York JFK/Newark, the markets where the two carriers dominate most from the point of view of the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. BA has meanwhile also announced new routes being added between September and December: London City-Chambery: 3x weekly seasonal EMB-190 service starting on December 18 (operated by BA CityFlyer (CJ/London City)) London City-Copenhagen Kastrup: 2x daily EMB-170 service starting on September 12 (operated by BA CityFlyer) London Gatwick-Cancun: 2x weekly B777-200ER service starting on November 3 London Heathrow-Gothenburg City: 2x daily A319-100 service starting on November 28 British Airways has also started codesharing with Meridiana fly (IG/Olbia) on the London Gatwick-Florence route served twice daily by the Italian carrier. Its routes from London Gatwick to Antalya, Izmir and Paphos will not be served between October 31 and March 27 and become seasonal summer only services. BA is also considering dropping Business Class from its short haul services operating from London Gatwick. Iberia has exercised options for five additional A320-200s and has sold the delivery positions to its new sister carrier BA. The latter has also just taken delivery of its first of six B777-300ERs. BA has retired its last B737-500 but still operates 19 B737-400s from its London Gatwick base. British Airways has entered into an exclusive agreement with CitationAir by Cessna (White Plains) to offer PrivateConnect branded connections to any destination in North America with business jets from several US gateways served by BA.