Part of the problem in weighing up the merits of the various alliances is that each person has different priorities in terms of what is important to them in coverage , nonetheless , I am always amused to see OW trumpet their coverage of Australia , a continent with a population of approx 20 million , and gloss over their lack of coverage of the worlds most populous continent , Asia , with a population of nearly 4 billion . I dont really believe that by having Australian coverage 'limited' to BNE/ADL/SYD/MEL/PER/CNS that *A is at a huge disadvantage - all the major business centres and centres of population are served via SIN and/or AKL . Yes , it would be nice to have NTL/HBA/CBR etc also on the *A map , and the ability to include Aussie domestic sectors would also be useful but for most purposes *A does serve Australia .

To me the biggest handicap oneworld seems to have is its inability to take Asia seriously , at the moment they have only two Asian hubs , both on the Eastern periphery of the continent , and they seem quite likely to lose one of those . Two hubs to connect to a vast continent of nearly 4 billion people !

The other big handicap OW faces is the lack of a centrally located European hub forcing pax bound for most of Europe from pretty much anywhere other than the Americas to overfly their intended destination and then backtrack . Both of these deficiencies seem far more serious to me than the deficiency *A and Skyteam suffer from in terms of lack of Australian domestic coverage .

I would love to see OW make a concerted effort to lure in MH who seem to be constantly spurned by Skyteam . A multihub strategy of KUL/HKG/NRT ( assuming that OW can hang on to JL) seems a good start for improving OW Asian coverage . If Kingfisher survive the next year or so they would probably be a good addition too ... they are already on the Global Explorer fare and that is often a precursor to OW membership .

It is all very well for OW to trumpet their 'quality over quantity' message ( with IB in the alliance ? please !! ) but the point remains that they serve only around 70% of the cities that *A serves , and if your business requires you to regularly visit those cities which are missing from the OW map , or to do multi-city itineraries in Asia then OW is never going to get your business .