In June 2022, it was revealed that Oman Air would join the oneworld alliance. While the plan all along has been for Oman Air to join the alliance in 2024, many of us wondered if this was still in the cards, given that Oman Air is shrinking considerably, and is in cost cutting mode.
There’s now a positive update, as the leadership of the oneworld alliance has once again confirmed that Oman Air should join oneworld before the end of 2024.
In this post:
Oman Air will be newest oneworld member airline
Oman Air will be joining the oneworld alliance, in a process that should be completed before the end of 2024. This development was announced at the June 2022 IATA annual general meeting in Doha. Two years later, at the June 2024 IATA annual general meeting in Dubai, the CEO of oneworld has confirmed that Oman Air is on track to join the alliance in the coming months.
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.
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 two new members (Alaska and Royal Air Maroc), but also lost one member (LATAM). The oneworld alliance is also in the process of adding Fiji Airways as a full member.
What is Oman Air, anyway?
Oman Air is a Muscat-based airline, and it operates a fleet of nearly 35 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 — the airline has Apex Suites in business class, and even has first class on select Boeing 787-9s. 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 is joining the oneworld alliance — oneworld offers the strongest elite recognition of any major alliance (I love being a oneworld Emerald), and the prospect of earning and redeeming oneworld miles 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 has a great first class lounge, which is way underutilized — the airline has very few planes with first class, but has a massive first class lounge.
For example, a few months ago I spent around six hours in this lounge, and was the only passenger there the entire time. Here’s to hoping the airline allows oneworld Emerald members into this lounge, as that would be quite a treat, and would be among the best oneworld Emerald lounges out there.
For what it’s worth, for the time being Oman Air has a partnership with Air Canada Aeroplan, so redeeming Aeroplan points is currently the best value for Oman Air awards.
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.
I suspect this friendship between the airlines is part of the reason that Oman Air selected oneworld.
Bottom line
Oman Air is joining the oneworld alliance, and that process should be completed before the end of 2024. While Oman Air’s desire to join the alliance was first revealed in September 2021, it’s nice to see this finally happening. As a oneworld loyalist, I’m thrilled to see that this great small airline will be part of a global alliance.
It’s just too bad that this process is so slow, and that Oman Air won’t be a full member of the alliance for several more months.
What do you make of Oman Air joining oneworld?
Agree, they already have an airline in the region.
I'm thrilled about this! Now we just need RwandAir, Mongolian, and few others to join!
As someone MUC-based and OW FF, I find WY to be a double-edged sword... they often have some of the best prices out of here to SE Asia, but the MUC-MCT red-eye on a 737 is a deal-breaker for me. Unless there was an absolute killer deal, I'd rather pass on them and fly QR/AY or TK if the price difference was too high.
Good to see. I question the utility it brings, with Qatar already there, but still nice.
SkyTeam has multiple carriers in the MidEast, but they're both relatively useless as connectors. Seems getting Etihad into the fold should be a priority.
Star seems to be by far the laggard of the bunch, in the region. It'd be an incredible scoop to get Emirates on board, but that airline (at least in the Clark regime) has shown...
Good to see. I question the utility it brings, with Qatar already there, but still nice.
SkyTeam has multiple carriers in the MidEast, but they're both relatively useless as connectors. Seems getting Etihad into the fold should be a priority.
Star seems to be by far the laggard of the bunch, in the region. It'd be an incredible scoop to get Emirates on board, but that airline (at least in the Clark regime) has shown zilch interest in doing so, and they have the prowess (though, maybe not the best interest?) in continuing to do so.
Unfortunately there's an issue with booking Oman via Aeroplan currently. They cannot book any Oman flight, even though availability exists and shows online.
Calling doesn't help either. Real shame as it looks like a great product (most of the time).
Well, Gulf Air could be a good fit for Star Alliance
How good are they at releasing award availability?
@ Ecr -- Availability is reasonably good in both business and economy, with many flights having four or more business class award seats. We'll see how this evolves.
Where exactly do you see these. There isn't even Economy any more. Im so glad I got to experience this great airline when I could when reward seats were available.
@Ben: Do you have any thought on how this will impact the Oman Air & Aeroplan partnership, given that AC is Star Alliance?
Would it be “tolerated” to have a partnership with an airline from another alliance or will this mean the end for Aeroplan redemptions?
@ Moritz -- There's nothing preventing an airline from having a partnership outside an alliance. For example, Alaska is part of oneworld, but has partnerships with both Star Alliance and SkyTeam airlines.
That being said, it remains to be seen whether or not Oman Air still finds this partnership to be valuable if it's tied into oneworld on a larger scale. Keep in mind that before the Aeroplan partnership, Oman Air had very few reciprocal agreements like this.
While WY award availability on Aeroplan has been present since temporarily disappearing in 2023, it hasn't been possible to actually book said award flights thru Aeroplan in quite some time. I suspected it was this impending partnership with OneWorld. Multiple Aeroplan agents confirmed that, despite seeing availability on their end, Oman Air was blocking access to actually booking and ticketing awards.
I don't think this move is going to help the current partnership with...
While WY award availability on Aeroplan has been present since temporarily disappearing in 2023, it hasn't been possible to actually book said award flights thru Aeroplan in quite some time. I suspected it was this impending partnership with OneWorld. Multiple Aeroplan agents confirmed that, despite seeing availability on their end, Oman Air was blocking access to actually booking and ticketing awards.
I don't think this move is going to help the current partnership with Aeroplan at all and wouldn't be surprised to see it disappear completely.