A stipulation from the EU ruling on allowing IAG to purchase EI was to leave all current joint ventures to continue and allow them to be renewed, so all the codeshares/JVs Hangar 6 has mentioned are free to continue, and why would IAG not want them to? They already get BAW, IBE and AAL connection money, leaving current deals in place grants them access to more money from UAL and KLM, plus allows us pax to select a better product from JBU.
And I agree AAL offer a far inferior product to ALL their US competitors.