OneWorld, A New Force?

OneWorld has come back from the brink of extinction that so nearly doomed its existence. Now aggression has returned to the team.

So having retained JAL - the team has plugged a hole in their environment by signing Kingfisher as the Indian airline. This leaves as a foregone conclusion that Jet Airways will now partner with Skyteam or risk being left out in the cold. In turn this means that there will be a falling into the ranks by many of the unaligned carriers.

The likely independents are the stalwart holdouts - Emirates and Virgin.

So what's next - I think we will see a fair degree of activity with the Alliances over the next 12 months. With Transpacific and Transatlantic alliances being formed and BA/QF immunity on the Kangaroo route seeing renewal last year - there will be some added complications emerging but things should settle down into a regular pattern. Ultimately I believe that Alliances will reduce the competition. I remain hopeful that independent players will pick up the slack.

Cheers