Originally Posted by
Sagy
My comments are about OW and what I expect from an alliance. Not in respect to what other alliances (with which Iīm not as familiar provide)
Fair enough.
Originally Posted by
Sagy
- But the lack of antitrust immunity does have a negative impact on the alliance, this fact (regardless of the cause) canīt be ignored.
- So your point is that *A has a worse partial credit set of rules, Iīll trust you. This doesnīt change my view that the current OW system is bad.
- Maybe I wasnīt clear. Except for between BA & QF you canīt upgrade on another airline within OW. I would expect an alliance to give me the ability to upgrade across the different airlines (QF & BA do that, if you are an alliance this practice should be available across all airlines).
- Having to fly to “the outer reaches of the continent to get anywhere else” is in my view lack of converge.
I agree that the ATI issue is very large although to be fair to OneWorld, BA and AA have tried to cooperate on two occasions and the authorities on both sides of the atlantic denied their request. Both ST and *A have therefore had a pretty large advantage in recent years as their requests for ATI were allowed. Hopefully in the next few months, this will be granted which I agree with you will be good for those of us preferring to use BA and AA on TATL flights.
I'm not sure how you got the information that QF and BA allow upgrades on each other's services. Sadly this is not the case as much as I would have liked. CX is the only carrier which operates this type of services although its pretty restrictive. I should point out that on *A the fares required to upgrade across *A are pretty expensive fares and IMHO are probably not worth blowing the miles on - i.e. bang for the buck is not high.
In respect to your last comment on European coverage, I do have to agree somewhat. Personally I think this was something that MA was meant to provide although sadly it has not materialised that way. LX would have been perfect but sadly that ship has now sailed. Hopefully something tangible happens sooner rather than later to sort this issue out.
Originally Posted by
Sagy
- You are explaining why it is the way it is, it doesnīt change the fact that the differences are there and give the clear impression of something other than an alliance.
- I have to disagree, if you are an alliance the first thing that I expect is the ability to use the other airlines for code sharing to locations one alliance member doesn’t fly and another does. To me this is by far the most important feature of an alliance (one airline helping another). Otherwise, in my view what you have is not an alliance. An airline can do one-off code share with any partner.
- Iīll take your word that OW it is better integrated. The fact that I canīt book a seat on IB from a BA website on a single itinerary involving both airline is ugly.
- Hence my statement “as a OW Sapphire”, as an Emerald my view might be different. However, I can very well judge an alliance as a second tier elite and it is not less (or more) meaningful than view of a top tier elite.
- The fact that others do not allow this functionality doesnīt change my view that is shows very badly on the alliance. I made it very clear that my comments are about the alliance. If 11 airlines want to call themselves an alliance, then I expect certain functionality to differentiate an alliance member from a partner. This is one area in which OW fails (others might be worse).
- The issues might be common and Iīm sure they are reasons behind them. When I look at alliance, I expect more than I get with just a partner and the grading scale is not on a curve. It might be very well that OW as an alliance is better than *A and ST. It is also the case that in my view OW is below average of what I would expect from an alliance and I consider “C” to be average.
I think you need to recognise that all the three alliances are marketing alliances and the level of integration is still fairly minimal. I have even had ticketing issues between LX and LH in the past and they are part of the same company.
Seating is an issue across all alliances and something I also would like to see more of. The issue you describe affects us all and I suspect it more down to the amount of programming effort required to put in all aircraft seating configurations into the host airline website. It's getting better as time passes, but there is still much to do no matter which alliance you travel on.
Finally I do have to state that there are aspects of one airline or alliance that I prefer over the other and IMHO, I would probably rate OW and *A pretty much on par. I prefer OW lounges, but some benefits on some *A carriers such as extra baggage allowance and alliance wide priority is fantastic. In fact if I had a choice between Star Alliance Gold and OneWorld Sapphire, I would almost certainly pick Star Alliance Gold. As I happen to move between several large OneWorld hubs however, the F lounge access I get as as an Emerald is still the benefit I enjoy the most. As always YMMV.