Originally Posted by
wijibintheair
I had always thought that OW did the right thing by limiting the number of partners thereby maximizing the benefits for each carrier in terms of through traffic from the other alliance airlines. ....For instance - if I wanted to get from NYC to KUL using OW - realistically I will either fly JL or CX all the way, or possibly AA to NRT and then JL - but basically JL or CX will benefit from me wanting to get to KUL. But keep the expansion really focused and limited and keep the alliance strong.
that is fine so long as the alliance you are with actually flies where you want to go . My understanding is that after all the officially pending members are added to the alliances OW will fly to 'nearly' 750 airports in 'almost' 150 countries ( as per the OW press release announcing S7s membership ) while Star will fly to 'over' 1000 airports in 176 countries ( as per the *A press release announcing A3s membership ) if I had regular business in a destination that is not served by a particular alliance that is going to affect my decision-making for most/all my travel - I admit that each alliance has gaps in coverage , but it would seem that OW will have more gaps / less coverage than the other two alliances ( I dont have the figures for Skyteam but last time I checked they covered around 900 destinations as well - obviously they may lose some with the loss of CO and CM and gain some with the addition of VN but when the reckoning is done they are still likely to come out ahead of OW )