Whats going on with OW?
 

Some of my co-workers and I were comparing FFPs a week ago and a Star flyer plainly stated "OW can't get me anywhere if half their airlines are on strike". That was a week ago and I mostly glossed over the comment until today (lots of downtime right now)
I have been looking into *A products and routes, especially with the UA/CO merger (I'm based in the US, so huge potential effect on me) and now with the obscene BA strike. I know most people aren't loyal to an alliance, but what is everyone thinking about OW right now? :confused:
Personally, I can't even justify planning future travel without a backup plan right now :mad:.

Who else is on strike (besides BA)?

None that I know of, but the AA labor/management relationship is a total mess. While these 2 airlines certainly aren't "half" of OW, they represent a large portion of it.
For US-EU flyers (like myself) this is huge. While IB is an option, the few experiences I have don't make me want to fly IB again anytime soon.

Presumably this is triggered by the impending BA strikes, but that's a short-term hiccup. Going through it is unpleasant - I would far rather fly BA trans-Atlantic than AA. But most frequent flyers don't have that much choice as they pick airlines based on their closest hub. So unless you're fortunate enough to have 2 major airlines serve your local hub, there's not much you can do but grin and bear it.

Not sure whether another strike at BA and unhappy people at AA warrant the question: "Whats going on with OW?"

BA is striking and QF/AA/IB/MA/CX/JL/RJ/LA/AY are all flying relatively normally so nothing unusual is happening.

+ I guessed the OP missed the LH strikes (*A), NOT to mention the union joys of dealing with AF* and/or AZ (ST) :)



* To be fair, the majority of the strikes affecting AF these days are caused by French air traffic controllers and NOT by AF staff.

During the Last Cabin Staff dispute almost 70% of Long Haul flights operated with Management, Non-Strikers and Quickly trained Office/Support Staff.

During the Ash Saga no Alliance Managed to fly:D

However, during the last strike.. I understand the catering in first and business was dramatically reduced... am I mistaken?.. Thanks....

True for a lot of cases, AFAIK. But given the choice of flying with reduced service/catering and not flying at all, what would you choose? :)

I'm sure everyone is going to agree with you there. And I did, admittedly, miss the LH strikes.

I still think that the other OW members should be concerned by this. Maybe I am overreacting/over-analyzing (which it looks like I am) but given the importance of the two airlines I would think that other member airlines are looking at the events with a cautious eye.

Did we have an LH strike lately?

February, I believe.