Greetings from FT’s new official oneworld representative, oneworld4u. Thanks for your warm welcome and for your support of and interest in what we like to think of as the world’s leading quality global airline alliance.

We’ve kept a close eye on FT for many years and have come to recognize FTers as some of the most insightful and knowledgeable folks in the industry. We appreciate your custom and your feedback.

Some of us have posted the odd comment here and there informally in the past, but this more formal arrangement will hopefully be more useful to all of us. We are looking forward to a long and mutually beneficial dialogue.

A number of you have asked what my role is at oneworld. Let’s maintain an air of intrigue by not being too specific (!), but I can confirm that I am a member of the alliance’s small central team, at what we call the oneworld Management Company (or oMC). This unit of around 20 people acts as the central secretariat for the alliance, based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I’ve been part of this team for around five years after working for longer than I care to admit for one of the alliance’s member airlines.

I’ll be calling on my colleagues to help respond to some of the points you post, so they may from time-to-time appear on FT under the oneworld4u name, just to keep that intrigue alive and well.

As Kiwiflyer points out, responding this is just one of many, many tasks we have to perform, so please be patient if it takes us a few days to respond to points you post.

Please also understand that I/we will not be able to comment on some of the items – mainly rumour or speculation – that you post. Every business needs to maintain some commercial confidentiality, and we are sure that our competitors devour FT as hungrily as we do.

To answer some of your initial questions…

Viajero asked whether a change is planned to oneworld Explorer fare’s 20 sector limit. The simple answer to that is yes – and we believe all other RTW fares face the same issue. The reason is that the technological standard adopted by the airline industry (through IATA) for electronic tickets cannot handle tickets for more than 16 sectors. The industry moves fully into an era of electronic tickets only from June. Tickets already sold by then for journeys of 16 to 20 sectors would of course remain valid. We are working on a formal announcement now, and this should be posted soon. While Viajero and a number of other FTers may use Explorer for journeys of between 16 to 20 sectors, you are in a very very small minority. The new restriction will impact on a tiny percentage of customers. Even so, it’s a shame anyone should be impacted. Over time, as technology advances, we hope this industry-wide restriction will be eased.

Headintheclouds asked why oneworld airlines use three or more GDSs. First thing to point out is that seven of our ten members currently use, or are moving to, Amadeus. This means, we believe, that oneworld will have a higher proportion of our members on just one IT system than either of our competitors. Why not have them all on just one system? Mainly because oneworld’s philosophy is that, so long as they can deliver the oneworld proposition, our member airlines should be free to decide what is best for their own business. If it works for them, and enables them to deliver all oneworld’s services and benefits etc, why force them to go through a whole lot of expense and hassle involved in a change? We like to think that this approach to running our alliance is one factor why collectively our airlines have the best record of profitability over the past decade or so.

Headintheclouds also had a number of suggestions on how we display our PRF downloadable schedules. Thanks for those. We keep this kind of thing under constant review and I’ll ensure your observations are passed on to the team who looks after this.

Wandering-fred asked how far forward schedules are firmed up (slight paraphrase!) There are a number of factors that come into play here – commercial, financial, operational, industry, safety.... All airlines set their schedules in response to commercial demand and to deliver adequate financial returns. If either of those factors change, this may cause them to adapt their schedules, sometimes (rarely) at relatively short notice. To enable them to mount the programmes they want to fly, they obviously need not only the right aircraft, crews etc, but also things like runway slots, terminal access etc. Generally these sorts of things are firmed up at the two main IATA slot conferences run each year, for each “winter” and “summer” flying season. Most GDSs can handle flights for up to one year less one day ahead. Safety is a key factor for all oneworld airlines and if there is an issue that causes concern (such as security at an airport in a region suffering from unrest or a natural disaster) this can cause them to adapt schedules at relatively short notice. Rather a long and rambling response, but let’s put it like this – no oneworld airline would post a schedule it had no intention of flying, but these things are sometimes subject to change for a variety of reasons, as outlined above.

Until next time!