Originally Posted by
UKtravelbear
People seem to see that VS joining an alliance or having joint business arrangments as solely being the frequent flyers of the other airlines 'taking away' reward inventory from VS without seeing that members of VS flying club will have access to rewards on KL/AF flights to a whole host of destinations VS currently does not serve.
I'm fully in favour of VS' direct partnerships with other airlines - but most of those direct partnerships are generally with top airlines.
As for alliances, if it was Star Alliance or One World I'd agree with you - but SkyTeam have, I would argue, on average the least impressive collection of airlines of any of the major alliances. In fact, I would say that they don't have a single stand out premium airline - nothing to complete with SQ, ANA, CX, QR etc.
So yes, VS joining SkyTeam would open up some new destinations, but generally speaking they would all require flying on airlines I don't want to fly on! I struggle to think of a single destination outside of the JV where a SkyTeam airline would be my favoured option. DL/AF/KLM are fine but we'll likely be able to redeem on all of those airlines anyway. On top of that, their current partnership arrangement with *A carriers such as SQ, ANA and Air New Zealand is a far superior arrangement than SkyTeam, in my opinion (if joining SkyTeam meant losing those business arrangements.)