In the event they do, they are currently committed to oneworld.

http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engine...-aircraft-1121

Relevant quote is towards the bottom of the article.

Hi,

just talked to the lounge dragon of the BA Lounge.
She told me, as a AB Status Customer, that from tommorow i can use the Skyteam Lounge or as long AB has still a contract with BA, the BA Lounge.

Globeground the handling carrier of Tegel has been informed that Airberlin will join Skyteam, and the transition is being prepared right now.

if anybody has more information i would be happy to learn about it.

thanks

dp

The last credible news article was this:
http://atwonline.com/airline-finance...team-talk-1022

If(!) Air Berlin were to switch alliances, this would come with an official announcement, say, 1 year ahead. Airlines can't just switch alliances, it takes a long time of preparation to allign systems and procedures.
Also, it would be stupid of Air Berlin to change alliances now. This is an expensive operation and not really suitable for an airline in financial trouble. In particular for Air Berlin, as Oneworld membership is stabilizing the company financially.
There is a third reason: Air Berlin can currently make more money by expanding codeshares with AFKL while remaining in the alliance.
So in the best case you spoke to someone who had no clue what they were talking about, in the worst case someone took the piss out of you.
I would not be unhappy to see Air Berlin in Skyteam, in view of my personal travel patterns, but I can't see this happening (if at all) within the next say 5 years.

But is that really the case?

Anecdotally, at least, AB doesn't seem to get much transfer traffic from oneworld (and how could they, as their main bases are not oneworld hubs). I would strongly suspect that the Etihad tie-up is of far more value and importance to AB than their alliance membership.

However, if there is something about to change tomorrow, it may be that Air Berlin is becoming a Flying Blue partner, and that reciprocal lounge access and mileage accrual/spending becomes possible from tomorrow. That's the sort of co-operation envisaged under the announcements already made, and would (at least to start) only account for the routes for which reciprocal codeshares have been agreed.

It certainly would be unprecedented for AB to switch alliances tomorrow, or anytime in the very short term. The most that could happen is just the extension of the partnership to include frequent flyer programs and lounge access. (I've just checked, and KLM codes are available on Etihad flights as and from tomorrow. I can't now check, but I don't think KL codes were placed on EY flights prior to December. So, tomorrow would appear to be the first day of the actual operation of flights in the new AFKL//EY-AB collaboration. So that's all that will "change" tomorrow. AB will not suddenly drop out of OneWorld and/or suddently join SkyTeam tomorrow. They would have to give notice, to the alliances and to the general public, before doing such a thing).

The trick of AF DL PR in working:
1>, When JAL in trouble, they put lots of articles and PR mechanism stating JAL will sign AF and DL to switch
2>, When JAL in talk with BA for JV, AF put in loads of rubbish online to say JAL will definitely sign up with AF and put in oneworld membership in danger
3>, When QF signed codeshare with EK, mysterious articles always being seen somewhere in the cornor that QF will leave oneworld.
4>, Every hour again there would be rumours that CX will leave oneworld tomorrow
5>, When AA decide to go CH11, DL say that they will buy AA straight away and make AA leave oneworld...lol
6>, Malaysia Airlines......

I urge anyone stop speculating on AB's alliance membership as the management have said firmly that they would remain in oneworld for now as oneworld bring 300K (or 600K? Have to look for original article) passengers to AB per year.

Please, can you show a source for those figures? I would really like to see that.

I'm just wondering where such a high number of transfer passengers could possibly have come from, in a period of little more than 7 months.

That said, AB carried just under 30 million passengers in the year to October, so a 1% (300,000) to 2% (600,000) rate of transfer from oneworld is actually a tiny percentage...

I am merging this thread with the existing speculative thread regarding AB's future in oneworld.

Gardyloo
oneworld moderator

@irishguy28:
I remember having seen that number of 300k passengers per year, too. I don't know where; it probably was in some interview in which Mehdorn explained that AB remains committed to OW. (Maybe he included codeshare sales by AB and the expected development over the next months.)
In any case, it was exactly this number I had in mind when I wrote above that OW membership stabilized AB financially.

I think you overestimate AFDL PR.
#3 and #4 cannot be attributed to AFDL; these rumors are primarily a function of comparably loose ties in OW. #6 is a complex matter and many people here on FT believe that it was AF who kept Malaysia out of ST. #1 and #5 are an aspect of US-market-based strategic behaviour. Putting all these things together into the category "AFDL PR tricks" oversimplifies the state of affairs and comes quite close to a conspiracy theory.

Very interesting.

Referring back to the latest traffic figures for AB, that means that the 300k alliance passengers represents less than 1% of AB's passengers so far this year - and granted, oneworld wasn't a factor for the first 3 months of the year. At this rate, we could perhaps expect about 1.5% of AB's traffic in 2012 to have been generated by oneworld transfers.

That said, AB's traffic for the year to date is down over 5%. So the "new" alliance traffic, even if it were doubled, still won't cover their downturn in passengers for the year.

It would be very interesting to know how many passengers are being funneled between Etihad and Air Berlin - I can't imagine that it's (much) less than those being funneled between oneworld and AB. And with the other oneworld airlines probably taking a cautious approach to AB, and with no planned major extensions of other oneworld carriers into BER or DUS, one wonders if the oneworld feed will increase all that much in the short term.

I could, under those circumstances, see Etihad being ruthless, and pulling AB out of oneworld especially if there is no realistic expectation of that trickle of passengers turning into a flood.

EDIT: without having seen a source for the 300k number, I just realised I have no idea how "old" this number is, and the assumption I made that this is right up to the present, i.e. covering the first full 6 months of alliance membership, may be incorrect. As a result, the actual number, and therefore percentage, of passengers coming from the alliance may indeed by higher by many times. Again, if you could provide a source for the 300k figure, I'd be most grateful.

I believe this is the article you are looking for.

http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engine...-aircraft-1121

In addition, even in a worse case scenario where oneworld membership is bringing in a relatively low number of passengers, how much more of an improvement could air berlin and etihad realistically expect by forcing a switch to skyteam? Sure skyteam is bigger, but air berlin would be sharing similar connecting traffic with czech.

Thank you -that does mention 305,000 and is dated November 23, so the 1% figure is seemingly correct.

I don't expect Air Berlin to leave oneworld (at least, definitely NOT in the short term). And I have even less of an expectation that Air Berlin would join SkyTeam. In fact, I think it's fairly obvious that is NOT going to happen.

Why would they? At the moment, they are picking up some few passengers from oneworld. That is not going to change despite the earlier EY codeshares, and now the AFKL codeshares, but would most definitely change if they left oneworld. The crossover between AFKL and AB is going to be small, at best. Looking at the routes on which they currently codeshare, there can not be a whole lot of demand for these services. But there is still the possibility that they can expand their collaboration, without requiring AFKL to "leave" Skyteam, or AB to "leave" oneworld. Similarly, AB does not have to "join" Skyteam in order to work with AFKL on further routes - it's already working with them, despite the two being in separate alliances. That just proves it's not necessary for all interested parties to be in the same, let alone any, alliance in order to work together.

The rigid days of alliance membership are coming to an end. (Indeed, for carriers like Etihad, they never existed in such a rigid world where you could only collaborate with your choice of airlines from a limited group, i.e. the ones that also signed up to the same alliance as yourself). Just look at oneworld - Qantas will soon be most interested in Emirates rather than in any of its oneworld "partners". AB is already there, with their main focus on Etihad, not on its alliance partners.

For as long as AB themselves, or paymaster Etihad, decides that having a few hundred thousand passengers a year from oneworld is useful, they will stay in oneworld. When either or both decides that's not useful anymore, they can cut their alliance ties, and still work with AFKL and Etihad - they don't need any alliance, if they decide they don't need oneworld. If, somewhere down the track, Etihad joins an alliance - and that's a big if, for now - then maybe AB will join that alliance, too. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Sorry, but isn't one of the major problems of AB TXL?

BER would have allowed/will allow AB to properly hub in one place (for example pulling some long haul flights away from DUS) and for other oneworld carriers to add traffic there (e.g. AA could switch its flights from FRA to BER, which it can't now to TXL due to the latter's capacity issues).

And of course BER is now slated to open...27 October 2013!!!

While BBI will allow AB to hub properly, there won't be many OW flights that are shifted to Berlin. FRA is such an important business destination that the hub options provided by Berlin are pale in comparison. But with eastern Europe growing, there will be a point of time when it makes sense for OW airlines to start flights to BBI and use AB's hub for connections.