NickB

AB to join OW, as discussed in this thread on the BA forum.

Will LH beef up BD at LHR as retaliation?

InfiniteCycle

I don't follow. How would beefing up BD be retaliation?

Wouldn't pulling German Wings in to be a 'fully integrated partner' be better if retaliation? Why would LH need to retaliate?

Rambuster

I still don't understand the paradigm shift AB is venturing upon ?
From LCC to alliance integrated airline. OW membership will incur lots of cost and operation complexity.

oliver2002

And BA would have to gift AB some precious LHR slots, which is very unlikely. LH/BD/LX/OS already covered the money making capital routes... running the show from LGW will only give AB access to the holiday routes BA runs ex LGW. AB could feed a few pax into AA via MIA from DUS.

If you read page 10 of the LH Passage ppt to investors, you will see how LH can smile at the AB plans. Also remember ABs expansion is on a very shaky footing as they funded themselves with cheap credit before the bust.

NickB

AB is LH's challenger in LH's home market. BD is BA's challenger in BA's home market.

uhh, why? AB joining OW does not necessarily mean that there is going to be a lot connecting services between AB and BA (alphabetic similarities notwithstanding ). I doubt that AB will fly to/from LHR and expect them to keep to the same airports in the UK. At most they could conceivably move from STN to LGW.

For me, AB's significance in joining OW would be essentially to make OW more attractive in Germany and therefore getting more German residents to fly BA, AA, etc... by allowing them to collect miles both on domestic as well as international travel within OW. It is not really about network integration/harmonisation between AB and other OW airlines.

oliver2002

ermmm... there we differ in opinions, I suppose... primarily a allaince is to find synergies and feed each other traffic. FFP synergy is a plus, but the cost of merging is not worth that. If you want the high fare paying pax you need to offer a service, not the ability to credit your vacation travel to the FFP.

DownUnderFlyer

Fully agree. While I like the idea of them joining, I can't see how AB would actually benefit from hordes of OW Frequent Flyer descending upon them and having the complexity of interlining, IT etc. And they need LHR/LGW flights unless more OW airlines start to fly into ABs hubs.

ANstar

Seems similar to the route Virgin BLue & JetBlue are taking... Although at least Virgin/JetBlue are already interlining/codesharing... will be interesting to see how these 3 airlines pull it off.

Rambuster

As speculated on the BA Board, perhaps AB can take over BA's LGW shorthaul operations ?
AB do know how to handle the bucket and spade pax.

Helsinki Flyer

Finnair, that has many Asian routes will benefit from AB´s feeder traffic to HEL. They´ll start code-sharing in a few months. Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Seoul, Peking, Shanghai, HK, Bangkok, Delhi and Singapore starting next spring. It´s not like AB will be flying to those destinations on it´s own.

KIXJNB

Fully agree. There's more to oneworld than just North Atlantic. The competition to LH will be on the Asian routes in co-operation with Finnair. Also think of Iberia. Air Berlin is strong already on Spanish routes. Link that up with Iberia's Latin American network.

NickB

But that does not mean that you necessarily need to hook up with every airline in the alliance. *A is a good example of that. There are many pairs of airlines which have very little to do with each other.
In OW, MA does not fly to LHR: they fly to LGW with very few meaningful connections onto the BA network. The expectation is that BUD-originating pax will use the BA flights (whether under BA or MA number) to get to LHR to connect to BA flights. The same would be true of AB.
The FFP significance is not just "the ability to credit your vacation travel to the FFP": it is about being able to credit domestic and international travel to the same FFP. If you have a mixture of domestic and international travel in Germany, there is an incentive to use LH and *A so as to pool both sets of miles in one pot. AB joining OW diminishes the strength of that incentive.
I doubt that BA expects that a lot of flyers will use BA to AB connections in LON or vice-versa. What they probably expect is that 1) more German residents will use BA services from Germany and 2) some will use AB as onward connections at German airports from BA flights to destinations not otherwise served by BA themselves. From a BA perspective, I suspect that 1) is more significant than 2).

KIXJNB

Precisely what is making me a very happy Berliner today!

TPJ

The cost for AB to join OW must be enormous.

They do not have any Lounge facilities (except for ex-LTU long-haul flights) and even topbonus Golds do not have lounge access - which would have to change. So IMHO they would have to pay for Lounge access for OW Sapphires and Emeralds traveling on AB and let their own elites to have this privilege.

Flying Lawyer

If there is no lounge there is no lounge and you can't offer one. Just compare it to SAS - they have only a few lounges on their territory, however. it obviously works.