Originally Posted by FlyerGoldII
The question is self-explanatory? Why has OW stayed static, in terms of the number of airlines, over all these years, while the other 2 global alliances are increasing.
In the other thread, it is suggested that the proposed 9th airline, may not be joining after all:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=436190
One World should get more Asian airlines - for transpacific routing between Asia and North America, it seems that one's options are somewhat limited between Cathay Pacific and AA. In contrast, Star Alliance has Air Canada, UA, ANA, Asiana, Singapore Airlines, Thai.
Hi,
I think most of the points have already been covered but a huge problem for oneworld is Heathrow and the fact that the competitors (Star alliance and Virgin) have been extremely successful with the regulators. Every time an airline wants to join Oneworld the regulators demand Oneworld (BA) or the joining airline to give up landing slots to the competitors at Heathrow. BA is for obvious reasons unwilling to do so and so is the candidate airline as XXX-LHR is probably its most profitable long-haul route with lots of business travellers. Star doesn't have such a bottleneck, nor does Skyteam.
/hv