Originally Posted by Darren

FG, I think youre making some unfair assumptions.

1. Airlines will necessarily benefit from an alliance. This isn't correct. They think they might benefit when they join, or they wouldn't have joined, but getting out of alliance can be very difficult when the alliance doesn't work for them any more. Look at Mexicana for an example. There is not only a cost of entry but one of exit and many airlines that derive no benefit from an alliance are hesitant to leave because of this. See Thai as an example.

2. Oneworld makes all the decisions. There is no "Oneworld" per se, there are seven airlines that make up Oneworld. It's not a federalist system and there is no overriding authority that makes rules that bind the members when a majority of members disagree. The rules are made when the member airlines want to act as a union, an alliance as it were, in order to promote the best interests of the alliance. In addition, the airlines being asked to join have a say in the matter as well.

3. Oneworld hasn't asked AS to join. No one knows for sure, but chances are above average, if no absolute, that Alaska Air has been asked to join Oneworld. See number 1 for reasons why they havent.

4. Oneworld would take anyone who asked. As Number 6 said, Oneworld tends to be particular and not interested in adding every airline under the sun. During the downturn of the past three or four years, not one Oneworld airline declared bankruptcy (maybe Aer Lingus but I think they avoided it), not one went out of business completely, none are in bankruptcy now, and with certain exceptions the airlines were some of the most profitable in the industry. Certainly as a whole the alliance was by far the most profitable out of the big three.

You answered your question about Canada. The geniuses north of the 48 didn't think that creating a virtually monopolistic airline environment would be a bad idea, so if you want more service then start asking questions of the Canadian lawmakers. CP was happy in Oneworld and Oneworld was happy having them. But there is really no viable Canadian airline that Oneworld would be interested in besides Westjet, and frankly, American serves most of the main Canadian gateways so I am not sure how important the market is.

BA didn't want Swiss because Swiss was (and still is) losing money like crazy but was too arrogant to admit that they needed to give up certain things to survive. The most publicized was the frequent flyer program. BA wanted to replace the Swiss program with BAEC and Swiss balked so BA told them to stuff it. Although this might not have been the best for some individual consumers, can one blame BA for its actions? It has a market that it needs to protect and will do what it can to achieve that. I have no problem with ditching Swiss. In the end, it has been proven that Swiss was not viable on its own and jumped on a buyout for pennies on the franc.

As far as the Germanic countries, what airlines are there? Air Berlin? Besides, Oneworld can focus on a market like India with a billion people, one like China with almost a billion and a half, and a market like Africa with probably near a billion compared to Germany with 75 million. With Malev appearing to join (and I don't buy into the hype about the LOT coalition) most of Eastern Europe is covered. Unfortunately, Lufthansa has such a lock on Germany that it's an impregnable market except for LCCs and Oneworld isn't really a LCC kind of alliance. Its one LCC became an LCC after being part of the alliance for several years.

JAL seems to want to remain outside any alliance at this point, though it is made some recent moves to want to consider it again. If you do some websearches, there are many articles from the late 90s when Oneworld was created stating that JAL was a sure thing for OW. Didn't pan out that way, unfortunately. I have read a lot about Asians being skeptical of alliances in general but I don't know the reasons. No doubt, though, that if JAL felt it was in their best interests to join that they would.