Airline alliances: Mobilizing network resources

•Evidence of differences between access and mobilizing of network resources.•We introduce the concept of mobilizing capability in airlines alliances.•Alliance experience and mobilizing capability affect on airlines' performance.

Airline alliances represent examples of resource utilization across a network. This paper examines the need to distinguish between access to and mobilization of the resources held by allies. An ordinary least squares regression was applied to a sample from the Top International Airlines database. Our findings show that mobilization of the destinations of the partner companies through codeshare alliances has a positive and significant influence on the performance of airlines. Moreover, they suggest that the development of network resources mobilizing capability in increasingly dynamic and global environments will only generate an important source of competitive advantage when acted upon.