Welcome to Flyertalk, and welcome to the BA forum
Astraltraveller, it's good to see you here and I hope we will see plenty more of you.
The
oneworld Alliance isn't so much about equality or the same benefits precisely, it's more about having a relatively seemless experience - in terms of ticketing, baggage, lounges - should you want to make a trip involving more than one airline. So going from Newcastle to Adelaide, that requires a minimum of two airlines, and
oneworld should make this a relatively easy experience. And largely it does. But it is ok for different airlines to have different benefits, so AA's upgrade process is (more or less) reserved only for their own status flyers, and MH travellers arriving into London can't use the Concorde Room based on First travel alone.
Vueling is not
oneworld, and I suspect it never will be. There are 2 levels of
oneworld membership, and a third about to come along soon, but VY isn't a good fit for any of those levels. VY happens to be owned by a company that has a number of
oneworld airlines in it, and some non
oneworld airlines too, but that's the best that can be said. In a way it reinforces the point made above, in that having a BA+VY ticket isn't as seemless as BA+IB on a number of fronts. Lounge access is however available to Gold cardholders on VY services at BA operated lounges, in certain circumstances.
Originally Posted by
Astraltraveller
It is owned by IAG and is a code share with BA & Iberia. There should be a warning saying that you won’t get the benefits you should get as a loyal One World flyer.
When booking on BA.com there is a warning that comes up about some aspects of this, so for example the fact that a different baggage weight system applies.