Mwenenzi: Just to prove that oneworld does not simply ignore these kinds of postings (!), here's some scene-setting on oneworld's membership strategy from the alliance's official FT participant.

oneworld’s focus has always been on the quality rather than the quality of our members. We believe this is what makes oneworld stand out as an alliance - and the CEOs of our member airlines have directed that we should maintain this approach.

We firmly believe that our alliance comprises some of the strongest airline brand names in the world. By concentrating on quality, oneworld prides itself on providing excellent standards across the whole alliance network so that, when a member airline transfers one of their customers over to travel on a oneworld partner, they can be confident that the service the customer receives will be top notch in that region.

From the very start, oneworld has always been very selective about which airlines we regard as potential recruits.

First, we have only ever considered carriers with brands that match those of our established partners – who, just to emphasise, we firmly believe include the best and highest quality airlines from each region of the world.

Second, we are only interested in working with airlines who share the same approach as us to this business – with safety, quality customer service and profitability as their priorities.

Thirdly, we look for potential recruits who can expand our existing combined network rather than simply duplicating what our existing members already offer.

We currently have two members elect, lining up to join us:

• Mexicana, Central America's leading airline, which will come on board later this year.
• S7, Russia's leading domestic airline, which will follow during 2010.

Bearing in mind that oneworld is currently the only alliance with member airlines based on all continents (if you don't count Antarctica), we think our network already offers the best coverage of most of the key places the vast majority of our key target customer base (frequent, international business travellers) want to fly to.

Beyond our existing members and members elect, there are just a few strategic regions of the world where we believe we could benefit from new members. These include, over time, Brazil, Canada, India and Mainland China.

But beyond this, we see little scope for adding more airlines without diluting the quality we offer our customers and the value the alliance generates for its existing members, through network overlap etc.

This is a different membership approach from some of our competitors’ – but we are convinced it is right for oneworld, right for our member airlines and right for our customers.

One key benefit of our highly selective approach to membership is keeping the alliance relatively small in terms of members - and this is a big help in innovating services and benefits that we believe our customers really value. This has helped us become the first alliance with full e-ticket interline between all member airlines (by some three years), first to accept on-line bookings for any alliance fares, and two projects now underway - first to enable FFP members to book redemption flights on all member airlines on-line and first with all member airlines selling flights by all alliance partners via their own websites.

As for which airlines we are considering for potential future membership, our policy is not to comment publicly on any discussions with outside parties. If they ever lead to a firm proposal, we would announce this in the appropriate manner.

Happy travelling.