In June 2022, it was revealed that Oman Air would join the oneworld alliance. However, the process of actually joining has been anything but quick. There’s now an exciting update, as the Middle Eastern carrier has completed the process.
In this post:
Oman Air is the newest oneworld member airline
As of today (June 30, 2025), Oman Air has joined the oneworld alliance, a move that has been a long time coming. With Oman Air now being part of oneworld, it should be possible to earn and redeem points with all oneworld programs for travel on Oman Air, and to take advantage of reciprocal elite perks.
It might take a little time for all oneworld airlines to update their websites to reflect mileage earning and redemption opportunities, but it should happen in the coming days. For example, I see American has just added its webpage for Oman Air mileage earning, which is revenue based.
For what it’s worth, prior to Oman Air joining the oneworld alliance, Alaska Mileage Plan and Qantas Frequent Flyer have already allowed members to redeem points on Oman Air. On top of that, Oman Air has a partnership with Air Canada Aeroplan, so you can continue to redeem Aeroplan points for travel on the airline.
Here’s how Oman Air CEO Con Korfiatis describes this development:
“Oman Air is honoured to be joining the oneworld alliance, whose members and global footprint represent the best of what international travellers want to experience. We are thrilled to be able to welcome oneworld customers to the Sultanate of Oman to experience our unique culture, stunning mountain excursions, beautiful beaches, and, above all, the warm hospitality of the Omani people.”
Meanwhile here’s what oneworld CEO Nat Pieper had to say:
“We are proud to welcome Oman Air to the oneworld family. Oman Air brings valuable strategic reach and award-winning product and service to the alliance. This partnership opens up exciting new connections for our customers, particularly across the Gulf and South Asia, and reinforces oneworld’s position as the premium alliance for international travellers.”
In 2021, Oman Air revealed its plans to apply to join the oneworld global alliance. The Muscat-based airline was hoping for Qatar Airways’ support in accomplishing this. Qatar Airways is not only another airline from the region, but also a oneworld member airline. For that matter, Qatar Airways’ former CEO was the chairman of oneworld at the time, and one of his primary goals was to expand membership in the alliance.
Then in 2022, plans were formally announced for Oman Air to join oneworld. So it took around three years from when it was formally announced until it actually happened. I know there’s a lot of back-end technology that has to be updated, but goodness, this has been a drawn out process.
In fairness, there’s a lot going on at the airline — Oman Air has a new(ish) CEO, and the carrier is also undergoing a restructuring, including shrinking considerably.
The oneworld alliance is one of the three major global alliances. Major airlines in oneworld include American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Qantas, and more. In the past few years the alliance added three new members (Alaska Airlines, Fiji Airways, and Royal Air Maroc), but also lost one member (LATAM).
Hawaiian Airlines is also expected to join the oneworld alliance in 2026, now that it has been acquired by Alaska Airlines.
What is Oman Air, anyway?
Oman Air is a Muscat-based airline, and it operates a fleet of roughly 30 aircraft, including Boeing 737s and Boeing 787s (the airline recently retired all Airbus A330s, so that represents quite a capacity reduction). This is definitely more of a “boutique” airline, and doesn’t compete on the global scale that Emirates and Qatar Airways do, for example. Oman Air flies as far West as the UK, and as far East as the Philippines.
Oman Air has an incredible business class product, as the airline has Apex Suites, which are among my favorite business class seats. Oman Air used to have first class on two Boeing 787-9s, but that product has now been rebranded as Business Studio. The issue is that Oman Air is quite inconsistent. On a good day, Oman Air is top notch. On a bad day… well, not so much.
I’m thrilled that Oman Air has joined the oneworld alliance — oneworld offers the strongest elite recognition of any major alliance (for those with oneworld Emerald and oneworld Sapphire), and the prospect of earning and redeeming oneworld points for travel on Oman Air is exciting.
I’m also curious to see what Oman Air does when it comes to lounge access for elite members at its Muscat hub. In addition to a solid business class lounge, Oman Air used to have a great first class lounge. However, with Oman Air having discontinued first class, the airline is no longer using this lounge.
Could we see it make a comeback as a oneworld Emerald lounge? I wouldn’t count on it, given the desire for cost cutting, but it sure would be nice. Maybe it’ll happen some time down the road, as the airline progressively increases capacity.
Is Oman Air a good fit for oneworld?
In some ways I’m surprised that oneworld is the alliance that Oman Air is joining. As much as I’m personally thrilled about this, on the surface you’d think that Star Alliance would be a better fit:
- The oneworld alliance already has Qatar Airways, one of the biggest Gulf airlines, which competes pretty directly with Oman Air for connecting traffic
- Star Alliance, on the other hand, doesn’t have any airlines immediately from that region; the closest airlines would be EgyptAir, Ethiopian Airlines, and Turkish Airlines, but I wouldn’t consider those to be direct competitors in the same way
I suspect this comes down to Qatar Airways and Oman Air cooperating pretty closely in general, and really viewing themselves more as partners than as rivals. Qatar Airways is even currently leasing planes from Oman Air. This friendship between the airlines is likely part of the reason that Oman Air selected oneworld.
Bottom line
Oman Air has joined the oneworld alliance as of June 30, 2025. Oman Air’s desire to join the alliance was first revealed in 2021, so this has been quite the waiting game. As a oneworld loyalist, I’m excited that this has finally become a reality, as it presents new opportunities to earn and redeem points, and to take advantage of elite perks.
What do you make of Oman Air joining oneworld?
GOOD ;-)
…. next, CONDOR please!
finally a decent replacement for lost airberlin!
OneWorld for sure is missing some good connections in Europe, besides Spain or UK, but who would bother flying via London or Madrid, when trying to fly to amazing destinations, but NON of those OW airlines from Europe do cover!
A real shame.
…. so please OW people, CONDOR (DE) next!
I flew Condor to SFO a couple of years ago. It was my first time flying with them and I was quite impressed by the plane (A330NEO) and service.
I'm having to post here as I'm surprised I can't find any information elsewhere. A relative of mine has 300,000 Sindbad points. Is it possible now to use those to book flights on Oneworld airlines? If so do we know what the mapping would roughly be between those and Avios?
How about posting a route map?
Porter Airlines next, please!
Oman Air Sindbad has not Tier associated with oneworld Emerald. You can only reach Sapphire.
I would bet that we won't see a reopening of the First Class Lounge MCT.
Considering how lucrative the Middle Eastern market is, it's great to see Oneworld lock themselves in as the strongest alliance in the region.
Syrian Air next?
Comment to One World management: Your member airlines overly restrict award inventory that is available to partner airlines. It is unacceptable and belies what an alliance is about.
Wow. I am sure “One World management” will get right on this, Lee
It’s amazing that Oneworld has four members from Arabic-speaking countries — QR, RJ, AT and now WY — with Malaysia Airlines also being from an Islamic-majority country… yet the Star Alliance has never expanded beyond Egyptair (which, let’s be honest, is an outright horrendous airline) in this region, plus Turkish if we’re being kind. AI and ET are the only other Star airlines with some sort of a Middle East network.
While of course WY...
It’s amazing that Oneworld has four members from Arabic-speaking countries — QR, RJ, AT and now WY — with Malaysia Airlines also being from an Islamic-majority country… yet the Star Alliance has never expanded beyond Egyptair (which, let’s be honest, is an outright horrendous airline) in this region, plus Turkish if we’re being kind. AI and ET are the only other Star airlines with some sort of a Middle East network.
While of course WY is a great addition to OW, I’d much rather Star add an airline like GF, as that’s badly missing from the Middle East. GF would benefit greatly from the Star network, and add a lot of value as a boutique airline in the same way that WY will now do for OW. Similarly, OW is badly lacking among Chinese-speaking countries, and JX is the most obvious add, since PRC airlines have never been very interested in OW.
Also, this is great news for the Oman Air lounge at BKK, which has been reeling since AOT stripped it of its Priority Pass privileges!
Both Turkish and Egyptair are more Middle Eastern than AI and ET…
Also yes AT is Arabic speaking but it’s not correct to lump it in with the airlines in the ME, given it’s location.
"PRC airlines have never been very interested in OW".
Actually, this is not the case. China Southern was very interested in joining Oneworld. American had bought a stake in the airline and were looking to have them join the alliance. However, it is my understanding that Cathay Pacific wasn't onboard with this (due to the proximity of HKG to CAN, which is China Southern's biggest hub) and they had veto rights to new Oneworld members....
"PRC airlines have never been very interested in OW".
Actually, this is not the case. China Southern was very interested in joining Oneworld. American had bought a stake in the airline and were looking to have them join the alliance. However, it is my understanding that Cathay Pacific wasn't onboard with this (due to the proximity of HKG to CAN, which is China Southern's biggest hub) and they had veto rights to new Oneworld members. As a result, this never ended up happening. And I assume Cathay's veto rights are why no mainland Chinese airlines have joined Oneworld.
In that case, why didn’t airlines like Hainan and Sichuan consider joining Oneworld, the way Shenzhen joined Star and Xiamen SkyTeam? Hainan and Sichuan were pretty big and well-known before the pandemic, but their name recognition outside the PRC has become almost zero thereafter.
With how quickly CCP is demolishing Cantonese culture and freedoms in HKG, CX will soon be a representative in "Chinese(Mandarin)-speaking" country.
It only contributes flights on the cheap and narrow 787. Not good.
They have been in the process of joining for more than a year, yet oneworld did not get a chance to include Omán air’s lounges on their website? Glad they found time to write a predsa release instead
I'm surprised there's hardly any details on how Sindbad is being integrated into oneworld. There's no earning charts for partner airlines with tier points, and even the phrase "tier points are not awarded on partner airlines" is still on the site. You would think with a nearly 3 year transition period that they would be able to flesh out an emerald tier too, but they don't have one yet. Apparently it's in the works.
Agree. They do not even mention the number of tier points needed for these two tiers. I am really quite surprised by the lack of information and, even more so, the lack of an Emerald tier.
Bring on Starlux now.