Something like that. .When it comes to alliances. When it comes to alliances, my personal approach is to effectively ignore any early announcement short of "airline xx will become the latest member of alliance yy as of day/month/year" in travel planning. A vague announcement with year only is not worth the paper it is written on and counting on it is a recipe for disappointment. In the best case scenario, the next announcement will sound like the above and give notice of joining which will still be weeks or months away.