First, I have to say, RJ is great. But you can hardly earn any miles or EQM when you fly LONEX fares with them. It is one of the problem with OW they need to sort out. When you fly with one airlines, you can earn different miles/EQM with different membercard. E.g. CX, when you fly Q class, you do not earn any miles at all with CX, AA etc. But you earn 25% when you are member of BA/AY. And when you fly around the world with their metal, as one AA member you do n ot earn any miles at all. I believe it is one issue. I have flown 65,000 miles last year, I can not make OW Sapphire at all. All my flying is revenue Discounted Y class spreaded in the globe. I can merely make two silver cards with CX and QF this year. But two OW Ruby does not equal OW Sapphire! OW should make it a rule that airlines should allow each other member to earn full mileage or full EQM on Y, B, H, M and L class. So people would have a reason to favour the LONEX fare. After this year I am really considering the options now.

Second, JL is not that important to OW if they can not fully integrate into OW system. I was in Singapore. And I hold one paper ticket of LONE4 issued by AA on 31st May. Upon check-in with JL, they denied my ticket since there is no yellow-sticker. I told them that AA One|World desk told me that no yellow-sticker is required since my 20 sectors flight is becoming 23 sectors after loads of schedule change and cancellations, and I travel with that ticket last two weeks for 10 sectors with CX and AA without problems. What is more, QF suppose to reissue my ticket as E-ticket from the JL sector. Well, with JL, it was not the case. Thery canceled my flight and my seat. I was flying SIN-NRT-PER, due to the cancellation, the route was SIN-NRT-SYD-PER. I lost all my seat allocation for the next sectors.Not the end, they finally decided to accept me for travel after talking with QF. Which was last minute. I was waiting in the airport for more than one hour.

Third, JL has no reason to leave OW since they face competition from Korean Air, ANA and Asiana. Jl knows geographily it is more important to OW than SkyTeam. But the problem is that people like me would fly CX for the same price range and better Y product when flying over Pacific. Unless JL has cheaper fare with full mileage, I would simply not fly with them. OW had concetrate in premier market for too long, they simply ignored the 'ordinary people' can contribute to the airline as well. Should I decide to fly between London and Tokyo, will I choose JL? No. Korean Air is much cheaper, and most of the Y class I can earn full mileage and EQM. Why JL? Or even CX, better Y product, and as one Silver member, I can use the CX lounge without question!

Last, JL has another option, that is to split its operations. E,g, sell part of its Japan Asia Airways operation to DL but not financially seprate JL and JO. Thus JL still remain in OW but the operational-seprated JO would join ST. Jal remain the major holding company of JO and make both JL and JO profitable. In some WJS news it mentioned the CEO had this differential operation strategy in mind. Should JL choose to do that, would be very interesting to see how they can survive between leagues. I am very interested to re-united with ST since they seems to appreciate its Y-class member more than OW.