Having spent several miserable hours in EI's DUB Gold Circle 'lounge' wating for an increasingly delayed EI flight back to LHR (and watching the bmi flight that all my other colleagues were on push back, on time, hours before me), I am tempted to agree. However, I think that EI and oneworld are as compatable today as they were originally, if only for the EI-BA relationship: which to a non-expert seems good from an geographical and symbiotic perspective for the two airlines. As for EI's lack of european J-class, now that my employer has banned short-haul business class travel post-credit crunch, perversely, traveling on one-class carriers is better, as at least I don't contemplate I am missing out on anything...

Nonetheless, I think that EI is Star's to loose, what with the UA partnership and EI's adamant determination that they do not want to move from their current T1 base (voiced when the LHR terminal alliance alignments were first mooted and they were still in OW)... which of course is now the Star hub.

Shuttle