Originally Posted by
rurouni212
This is not correct.
Star currently reports approximately 670 million passengers annually. Oneworld reports approximately 341 million. Given that TAM (37 million/yr) and USairways (66million/yr) will switch and adding all pending members for Star and Oneworld, Star will have about 575 million passengers annually while Oneworld will have about 467 million annually. I grabbed these numbers directly from the alliances websites.
The story for revenue passenger miles, daily departures, fleet size and destinations are also similar, Oneworld will make an immense jump and significantly close the gap with Star Alliance and Skyteam. However, Oneworld will still be the smallest by most, if not all, quantifiable metrics.
Okay, indisputably was a bit strong, but there are several factors not captured in your analysis above that suggest oneworld will be larger by the time JJ joins in 2014.
For one thing the *A website numbers seem consistently high/inflated, for instance they claim 80 million passengers for US and 147 million for UA versus the 66 million you site above and the 140 million UA reports. That's a 20 million passenger discrepancy for just the two largest *A members. The alliance website numbers also fail to capture recent changes, for example IAG's numbers don't correctly capture the increase from BMI and Egyptair's numbers don't reflect their traffic plunge since the revolution.
But more significantly I think there are some other major changes on the horizon that won't take as long to complete as JJ moving over. Without US and JJ the current *A carriers had fewer passengers in 2011 and 2012 than the current skyteam members. Oneworld and its pending additions are nearly the same size and have grown by over 50% in a matter of months, that momentum does not yet seem spent.