Originally Posted by
Kiwi Flyer
Huh? More options are good. If there is only 1 or 2 flights and these have no availability for awards or reasonable fares when you want to go, then the so called strong alliance isn't much good. Worse still many places are not served at all, and even more routes have service - not much use having service to both origin and destination if flying between them requires routing via other places thousands of miles off course (eg ICN-NRT-PEK).
I prefer something that is between the two. A remote-but-popular destination should be served by two OW carriers from different geographical locations.
MLE is only served by BA out of LGW. Sure the Europeans may have a ball, but pretty lackluster out of US West Coast and East Asia. PPT is another - LA serves out of it's SCL-IPC-PPT route, but the only other carrier is TN-QF codeshare to AKL and SYD.
And sure it's always nice to hear a new member such as S7 joining OW, but it's flight options from East Asia to the Russian Far East is lackluster at best. A 685 mi direct flight from NRT-VVO isn't available, the only way one can do this flight is to fly a painful 5476 mi NRT-ICN-OVB-VVO journey. The same with Khabarovsk and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
As for ICN-NRT-PEK, an addition of a mainland Chinese carrier would definitely take care of that issue.