Kingfisher to join OW
 

http://www.aa.com/viewPromotionDetai...oryId=16125840

Tuesday, 23 February 2010: India’s leading domestic carrier and only five-star airline, Kingfisher Airlines, is lining up to join oneworld ® after signing a memorandum of understanding as its first step towards full membership of the world’s leading quality airline alliance, subject to Indian regulatory approval.

The agreement was concluded at a meeting between Kingfisher Airlines’ Chairman Vijay Mallya and Chief Executives from oneworld’s 11 existing member airlines, which include some of the best and biggest names in the industry.

Kingfisher Airlines today applied to India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation for authority to proceed with its membership of oneworld.

A target date for Kingfisher Airlines to join the alliance will be confirmed once this approval is gained. The process to bring any airline on board normally takes around 18 months to complete, so Kingfisher Airlines could be expected to start flying as part of oneworld during 2011.

w00t!

Is this karma or revenge? Look at their King Club partner airlines: DL, AF, KLM, CO, Qatar, Emirates. AA is after you DL :p

excellent news, coming as it is straight from horse's mouth (AA) and not from any unsubstantiated rumour. Let's hope now it is a beginning of a trend towards closing OW gaps in Asia, also let us reminder that AA/OW still has bigger fish to fry there (again until exhaustion: MU, MH...).
The only concern is the financial situation of Kingfisher, that as far as I recall is not really solid. Mallya some months ago was trying to sell up to 49% of the company to foreign investors, and it may be assumed that AA with its war chest from JL battle can put some of it to that use.
Also, i would like a deeper cooperation and invitation to 9W. This would effectively shut out ST from India and a sweet revenge against DL.

Great news indeed! Their Kingfisher First product looks very impressive ^

IT could still partner with AF just like JL does so ST might not be completely shut out of India. But no such luck/love for DL :D

This is excellent news - connections in from LHR, HKG, SIN, DXB and CMB then all over India. The International First does look rather good too. I can definitely see myself using this on future RTWs.

The OP's link doesn't work and Google News isn't turning up anything to this effect.

AA removed the page. The press release was dated Feb 23 2010. So AA released it prematurely ;)

Here's a link to the release before it got pulled, together with obligatory CEO group photo - http://www.airlineindustryreview.com...orld-alliance/

Jet are currently an AA partner, but if instead of sending passengers to India via BRU, they may well send them via LHR under the ATI to Kingfisher. I'd imagine this would make Jet look elsewhere.

Fantastic news for OW!^

No mention on Oneworld or Kingfisher's websites yet.

If it's indeed true then would signal the "quality before quantity" approach of OW continuing. However, I would like to ask if Kingfisher has been involved in any safety related serious incidents in the past few years? How are their safety standards generally?

This is excellent news. I think other OW carriers though will find it hard to compete with Kingfisher's service.

One a one hour flight IT will serve you a full meal in Economy, and they will pick up your baggage from kerbside and porters will check it in for you, for domestic economy.

I'd had the (mis)fortune of travelling on domestic flights operated by other OW carriers and on those flights you'd be lucky if you get a smile from the cabin crew, let alone a meal or porters!

This is also great news for HKG based travellers to India, and terrible news for CX's India operations because CX is already having a hard time competing with IT/9W flights to BOM which offer better service and timings and now there will be even less reason to fly CX.

It is the 23rd in most of the world , indeed , in my part of the world in less than three hours it will be the 24th ;)