In June 2024, it was formally announced that Fiji Airways would become a full member of the oneworld alliance. There’s now an exciting update, as this process has been finalized, and oneworld has a new member airline.
Continue reading: Fiji Airways Joins Oneworld Alliance: What It Means For Travelers
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Fine BUT the big question is about partner access to award inventory. Specifically business class.
Nice! But does not resolve the main gaps in the geographical map: Central Europe and Latin America. The options there are few and all rather unlikely.
@ Andy -- Agreed, oneworld needs to do something there. But it also gets at the complexity of the veto rights of founding alliance members, and how they may not always act in the best interest of the alliance at large.
@ Lee -- We don't have any reason to believe that will change, as Fiji Airways awards have been bookable through many programs for a long time (like Alaska Mileage Plan). Fiji Airways isn't great about making saver level business class awards available (aside from occasional availability dumps). With Fiji Airways now part of AAdvantage, awards can be booked at "rule buster" rates, but those are painfully high.
You don't really have much choice left for either. For Central Europe, either airBaltic or Air Serbia. For Latam, GOL.
In Africa, would RwandAir be a good fit?
No African airline south of the Sahara and north of Kruger National Park has the heft to be part of an alliance with the obvious exception of Ethiopian.
Air Baltic? They are at the edge of the continent and serve the same area as Finnair. That wouldn't boost the network much. BT did hint some pan-European expansion ambitions but nothing came out of it so far.
The real gamechanger would be if OW managed to convince LOT to switch.
Not even Kenya?!
Anywho, another gaping hole would be China and India. While you have CX/UO, that isn't enough with the amount of frequency and service to the smaller cities. As for India, there's IndiGo.
Other than that, you'd have a good network. Bangkok Airways can certainly work. Philippine Airlines is in a tough spot as they don't have anything to offer an alliance beyond the Philippines.
Gulf Air is another interesting case.
It's unlikely that oneworld will be able to close those gaps.
- SA Airlink do have a close relationship with QR, but, not unlike Rwandair, they're an inconsequentially small player.
- Gol absolutely won't be joining oneworld. They are in the same conglomerate as Avianca and handle massive amounts of AFKL connecting traffic, plus they work very closely with Aerolíneas Argentinas (I think you can turn up at the airport with a flexible ticket and jump on the next AEP-GRU flight regardless of who operates it).
- IAG would like to bid for TAP, but I don't think they'd be successful. Air Baltic seem destined for LHG, so there's only JU and a few smaller Balkan carriers left, unless something crazy happens with LOT, Condor, or TAROM.
All in all, they will likely remain the smallest alliance and only have Doha as a proper global hub.