Originally Posted by nimeta
This seems strange business logic to me as I am sure that they must lose a fair amount of revenue from not being in a decent Alliance. I appreciate that many people are loyal to Virgin as they feel the service is superior to BA et al, and I also appreciate that ST are generally lower standard airlines than Virgin, but does this compensate for the loss of revenue of not being in an alliance??
Not necessarily. It is far from clear that airlines with a limited network necessarily fare better in an alliance than outside it. For some, a series of multiple ad hoc bilateral partnerships/codeshares with carriers in different alliances can make more sense. AS follows a similar strategy, with partnerships with both OW and ST airlines.