kiwiandrew

I have to say that I didn't see this coming ( assuming the story becomes confirmed)

http://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/ne...-star-alliance

I would have thought they were a far more likely candidate for Skyteam given their relationship with Air France. Interesting

scottpenderson

Agreed, a very interesting addition for *A if confirmed. I thought they would try to add a Middle Eastern or Asian carrier as a priority. It seems like they already have fairly good representation in Africa.

ralfkrippner

And I wondered why LH is starting Marrakesh and Casablanca...

Would be great to see RAM join *A and I hope they offer some connections to europe also with their widebodies. Several years ago my wife flew with them to FRA on a 747 after a previous flight was cancelled due to tech reasons. Wikipedia states that RAM owns one 747, a handful of 767s and got the first of 5 ordered 787s.

TPJ

My first thought, too

AnsettAU

Wow, if this actually happens, *A's presence in Africa will be pretty substantial - considering they already have SA, ET, and MS. I also thought RAM would go to skyteam...

Indelaware

The earlier termination of the DL-AT codeshare suggests that AT wasn't destined for SkyTeam. Likewise, AT's concurrent codesharing of routes with both IB and YW suggests that ties which would have led to OneWorld membership weren't strong. I'd be interested to know which *A airline will be sponsoring AT's membership.

Geography lesson: Morocco is not in the Middle East (Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, Yemen, and Egypt). Morocco is in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt). Only Egypt can arguably be considered to be both in the Middle East and North Africa.

*A has one Middle Eastern carrier (MS) and several Asian carriers (AI, CA, NH, SQ, TG, & ZH).

That said, the addition of AT to *A does a great deal for the alliance. There are many points in Africa served by AT, but not served by any of the other African *A airlines (ET, MS & SA) or, for that matter, any of the European members (A3, JP, LH, LO, LX, OS, OU, SK, SN, TK & TP). The combined route networks of AT & MS are also complementary. I've flown my share of AT-MS interline connections and it would have been nice to post all the miles to just one plan.

*A would be the clear leader not only in North Africa but in Africa as a whole; neither SkyTeam nor OneWorld has any airline in North Africa while continent wide SkyTeam has KQ and OneWorld is without a member.

If AT does go with *A, then that leaves thin pickings in North Africa and accross the continent for both SkyTeam and OneWorld. Perhaps TU or AH could be picked up by Sky Team. Further south on the continent, the only remaining airline of any size is W3. I suppose 3W & KP could eventually become affiliate members of *A through AT, but that doesn't add any bang to the alliance.

The two new additions to *A which I would like to see are OA & 4D -- given that they are both owned by *A members and aren't LCCs, it really doesn't make sense that they aren't.

Transpacificflyer

RAM is a dismal airline with exceptionally poor ratings on everything. It would be a degradation of the brand to allow this airline to join. It is bad enough that Egyptair and Air India were allowed in.

It would make more sense to ask a well capitalized, well managed Gulf based airline to join. However, it appears that several of *A's carriers (e.g. Lufthansa and Air Canada are terrified of quality airlines.)

Xiaotung

ET will be the sponsor.

KLouis

RAM is a 3-Star airline according to Skytrax, along with AA, Delta, Southwest and... Kuwait Airlines (Gulf-based if my geography is correct).

NYCRuss

RAM is now denying this:
https://twitter.com/RAM_Maroc/status/558586748578824192

mahasamatman

Egypt must be really important to be listed twice!

dvs7310

OneWorld does have a tiny presence in Southern Africa with BA's Comair Franchise (MN) which aside from ZA domestic also operates a few regional flights beyond South Africa.

4D only operates one route with a whitewashed 76 passenger MS plane to disguise the fact that MS operates a flight to Israel... not really a major issue if they are included in *A or not. As for OA, I'd anticipate that at some point they'll end up fully integrated into A3. I'd say one of the more frustrating ones is MI (SilkAir), they are also not an LCC and operate 44 routes in SE Asia and the region. I've never understood why SQ won't include MI in it's umbrella for *A, it seems that in OneWorld CX does exactly that with KA, CX operates long haul and regional trunk routes while KA operates secondary cities.

Back to the original topic, personally for myself, AT joining *A wouldn't do much to benefit me. The only destination I can see that I'd fly them would be RAI but then I'm not sure if it'd be more efficient to connect through LIS or CMN if I go to Cape Verde. Neither AT nor TP fly anywhere in East Asia so I'd have to get to one of their two hubs on something like TK, LH, or LX anyway.

Indelaware

It is not unheard of either for prospective members to deny talks nor for false rumors of talks to exist. Time will tell.

One analysis suggests AT is planning CMN-PEK and is considering joining a yet undetermined alliance. It already flies both CMN-JFK and CMN-YUL.

I stand corrected on Oneworld in Africa with MN.

Your point with MI being excluded is well taken. It is, I suppose, a matter of personal perspective. My travels to East/South East Asia are very few. But travels to Europe and Africa many.

Including 4D's CAI-TLV/TLV-CAI in *A, IMO, would bolster traffic to both cities. I'd think that there is some number of passengers traveling to one or the other on award tickets who would make a circle trip of it if they could pay for the extra leg with miles. Personally, whenever I'm in either Israel or Egypt, I fly between CAI & AMM on MS, take care of whatever business I have in Jordan; traveling overland between Jordan and Israel. This is fine for those paying with cash, but since awards limit one to one (or no) open-jaws it is less of an option for those seeking to use miles.

Additionally, I'd find it personally useful when making between Israel and various points in North Africa. Yes, there are some who take TLV-CAI-TUN/ALG/CMN trips.

As to TYO-RAI, I suppose one could avoid Europe by flying TYO-PEK-CAI-CMN-RAI on HN/MS/MS/AT or CA/MS/MS/AT or TYO-BKK-CAI-CMN-RAI on NH/MS/MS/AT or TG/MS/MS/AT. Yes, going through Europe makes more sense.

NYCRuss

CMN–JFK is not a plus for *A. Unlike at EWR, UA barely has a presence at JFK. The domestic carriers with a major presence at JFK are AA, B6, and DL.

dvs7310

There are a lot of *A flights out of JFK that don't rely on UA for feed. JFK is a major O&D outlet and believe it or not, North America isn't necessarily a deciding factor for determining an alliance, especially a regionally focused airline like AT whose long haul flights to North America = 2. For JFK though, left coasters have the P.S. flights on UA, but otherwise, it's a $10-15 shuttle ride from LGA if you want to connect to a *A JFK flight. I've also done the train JFK-EWR & v.v. via Penn Station that is quite easy and in the $20 range. Probably not something you'd want to do with a lot of luggage, but then there's also a shuttle that is venerable to traffic delays for those folks.

Having said that, I still don't see much advantage of AT in *A and think they'd have benefited one of the other 2 much more, I think TK and MS have major cities in the Maghreb covered pretty well, if *A wants West Africa then they should pull in ET's subsidiary KP (Asky) in Togo. That's supposed to be a very well run airline that already cooperates heavily with ET now, though I'm not sure how much other *A feed they may have at LFW.