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 ;)

Confirmed by Finnair:

http://www.finnairgroup.com/group/gr...000463982.html

Also by Kingfisher:

http://www.flykingfisher.com/media-c...-alliance.aspx

Wonderful news!

India?s Kingfisher Airlines set to join oneworld alliance

Aside from India among other destinations they fly to BKK, DXB, SIN, CMB, LHR & HKG.

Official press release on the oneworld website is now out:

http://www.oneworld.com/ow/news/details?objectID=20873

Great news!

I wonder if Jet Airways will be an AAdvantage partner and QANTAS FF partner for much longer.

IT's official entry into OW cannot come soon enough for me and we are talking about before the end of next year if IT delivers to OW on schedule.

I am still hoping to see 9W go with Star Alliance (and that AI's move into Star Alliance doesn't kill that).

9W and IT had in the past an agreement to harmonize routes and offerings domestically and (i think also) internationally. I do hope AA would reach quickly to 9W for OW. It would be a double whammy and really make a huge difference for the alliance.
Star can and will do well with AI :cool:

I strip-out all extraneous info from the AA links I post -- things like locale information, etc. This allows me to troll the AA website easier and find gems like this, but the link may not work for non-US locations.   (In fact, I believe my post in the AA forum was, in fact, a world-wide scoop,)

If you want the link in its pure (as originally written by AA) form, try this link.

I wonder if one of the terms was for the other Alliance members to serve Kingfisher on their flights? :)

This is great news, though I hope they can reduce the time to well less than 1.5 years.

The press release is even more momentous:

"Kingfisher Airlines' addition to oneworld will link India's most extensive domestic network with oneworld's unrivalled global network, as the only alliance with airlines based on every continent."

So OW has a member airline based in Africa, if only they'd let us know the name!

To be fair Comair is based in Africa. It may fly with BA livery, but it is an independent company. On the other hand, what member is Antarctica-based?

Yes, Comair as a OW affiliate that serves five countries on the continent of Africa and the island nation of Mauritius. Still their service only provides a fraction of coverage of the the national carriers of Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa.

Of the major airline alliance members, I would take a wild guess and guess that OW's LAN comes closest to landing in Antarctica.

Great News
 

It is great news indeed. I wonder if the London-India route would rise price in Business class or not inline with Kingfisher join OW.

Now, the next joiner and their book rate:

MU China Eastern 1/10
HU Hainan Airline/Grand China Airlines 1/25
MH Malaysian Airlines 1/30
9W Jet Airways 1/50
BR Eva Air 1/150

Other candidate:

Air Pacific: 1/200
Gulf Air: 1/500
JetStar: 1/1000
WestJet: 1/5000
Air Berlin: 1/5000

Above list is based on market speculation only. Rumer based. Not a reference for reality.

I would be inclined to put it the other way around - HU are much more likely in my humble opinion - reportedly JL had previously offered to sponsor them .

Which they can't afford doing it anymore? :p

True, but counter point is that OW has many holes and spotty coverage across various areas:

intra-West Coast US/Canada (i.e.: LAX-ANC/YVR/SEA/PDX) - need AS
intra-Canada - need WestJet
intra-Brazil - need GOL
intra-China - need MU
intra-SE Asia - need MH? PR?
intra-Africa - no one, ComAir barely scratches the surface.

This is great news and they were not high on our list of potential members. Looks as if they have a nice fleet of wide and narrow body Airbuses and a good product overall.
If they now start flying to NRT and MLE things would be even better.

There's alot of talk with JL, at one stage they said they were going to sponsor VN into OW, then they ended up loosing them to ST.

MU we will see who they will choose in somewhere this week/next week!
9W I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure ST would like to grab them into their camp! Both IT & 9W were at one stage interested in joining ST.

I hope Malaysian (MH) joins oneworld. There's a big gap in Southeast Asia right now, and MH would be a great add. But that'd probably mean realigning half of the Kangaroo runs to connect through Kuala Lumpur. Are Qantas and BA willing to do that?

No. It would not be the condition. If MH joins OW, BA/QF will still connect through BKK/SIN. The current agreement would not be effected. And if MH joins there is more reasons for BA/QF to hold market share in BKK/SIN.

However, if MH joins OW, one change may occur. BA may drop BKK-SYD route and let QF to run on their own and codeshare only. Then BA may have enough plane to do 10 times a week scedule between UK and BKK.

The ugly side would be that it would be difficult for BA members to earn points on MH metal but MH members will get loads of points from BA.

Superb news. Especially the speed which which they are suggesting it will be done by.

What a turn around for OW - a week ago it looked like they might lose an Asian carrier, but instead now they will have an extra one!

And Kingfisher is a superb airline.

But are the safety standards up to other OW members level? Tried to ask that before in this thread.

I don't think anyone here is able to say. If past performance is an indication then they have a clean record. However, they were founded just 5 years ago so there is not much data to look at.

The only time I flew a Chinese carrier was in January with Air China, the only thing good about Air China was getting off it! Now I have never flown on neither China Eastern or Hainan Airlines, anyone flown on them both? And which one would you say is better 'quality', cos oneworld should only be interested in 'quality' and not quantity!! :)

Additionally, I really hope oneworld should take MH, because MH is another 5-star airline and will fill the gap in Southeast Asia.

Why would MH join oneworld unless the other oneworld carriers improved their service to/from Kuala Lumpur? In other words, what can oneworld offer MH in terms of synergies?

If BA/QF routed some Kangaroo routes via KUL, that'd do it. But unless they do that, I don't think the present oneworld service to MH's hub is sufficient to entice MH to join.

Does anyone have an idea when they will join - OW website is saying "no date set"?