Originally Posted by
qwertyuiop
Beyond that, they don't really care what alliance or what other partners their partners have providing they feed connecting traffic into AUH where appropriate. They don't want to join Skyteam, they just want AF, KL, AB and anyone else to route Asia/ Africa/ Australia traffic via AUH and they want those airlines to take EY passengers on to secondary markets that EY itself does not yet serve.
I agree that this is their number one goal. But with the way the competition is lining up, they might feel they *have* to join an alliance to meet that goal as OW pushes all their traffic through DXB and DOH. But I agree that if they can get away with partnerships, then they won't need to join ST. We'll see how it shakes out.