Malaysia Airlines is now officially a OneWorld member!

Updated: July 19, 2013

Published: February 1, 2013

In October it was announced that Malaysia Airlines would be joining the OneWorld alliance as of February 1, 2013, and for once in the airline industry it seems as if that estimate was actually accurate — shocking, I know!

Today Malaysia Airlines became the newest OneWorld member airline, and to celebrate all OneWorld carriers are offering double miles for travel on Malaysia Airlines between February 15 and April 15, 2013 (for tickets bought today or later). Now it’s kind of funny this promotion has been announced given that many airlines (including American) haven’t actually published accrual charts for travel on Malaysia, so when they get around to publishing them at least you know you can earn double as many for the next couple of months. For example, here’s American’s version of the promotion, for which registration is required.

Award tickets for travel on Malaysia should be bookable using OneWorld miles now, and British Airways even shows Malaysia award space on their online tool.

As a reminder, Malaysia’s only service to the US is to Los Angeles four times weekly via Tokyo Narita. For what it’s worth award availability is excellent on the route, and I see two business class award seats available almost every date. That being said, their business class product is angled flat, so probably not as desirable as Cathay Pacific.

They also have a first class product on their Airbus 380s, which serve London, and as of March 1, Paris. However, I’ve searched a wide variety of dates and don’t see any award space in first class on those flights. I’m not sure whether they just haven’t been loaded to OneWorld, if Malaysia has no intentions of making them available, or what, but if anyone has any context on the situation I’m sure many of us would be interested in hearing it!

Anyway, this is an exciting development. OneWorld was pretty weak in Asia with just Japan Airlines and Cathay Pacific, so it’s always nice to have another partner airline.

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Absolute Guest

February 4, 2013, 5:58 pm

Explains all the ads right now - landed in KUL on Saturday, and the malls are flooded with ads for Malaysia Airlines and it's new OneWorld status.

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Mike S. Guest

February 2, 2013, 9:29 am

"using the KVS tool on the BA mode it sure looks like there’s some sort of an error with the BA-MH fare class mapping." What other search engine could one use to find availability? I dont think AA does, Qantas?

AndrewM Guest

February 1, 2013, 9:19 pm

Hey Ben. I'm not an expert in MH mileage tickets, but using the KVS tool on the BA mode it sure looks like there's some sort of an error with the BA-MH fare class mapping. Search for KUL-LHR or KUL-CDG and you'll find something like this: "YS1 CS2 YS9" (note there are two Y groupings, one in the position where you'd expect to see first class.) If you search BA's website for F tickets on those same routes, you'll see that it returns "Economy", but with only one seat remaining, so it's clearly pulling the initial coach bucket that you see on KVS. Go to the next step and sure enough, you're only charged the coach mileage price. To me, that suggests that BA is incorrectly mapping the first class bucket to an economy class display and cost. I haven't gone through with a booking, but this might be an opportunity to get first for the price of coach. YMMV and who knows whether BA would honor the ticket if this even works.

Brady New Member

February 1, 2013, 5:48 pm

@Grady -- Ace is correct, happy about them joining OW and not the double miles for that route. 9k Avios is pretty easy to replenish, so nice to use C and the lounge, even though my new shiny Priority Pass card would provide that.

February 1, 2013, 5:10 pm

Besides F class on the A380, I think MH also offers F on their 747's (which they used to fly on the LHR route). I wonder which other routes besides LHR and CDG do they offer F class? Maybe there is better availability because it is considered an 'older f class' ?

Malaysia Airlines is now officially a OneWorld member!

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