The answer is "follow the money".

Oneworld although it is a legal entity is not really a commercial entity in the same way an airline is. Each FFP has it's quirks and benefits, and typically there is something to reward frequent flyers to focus their flying activity on a selection of airlines, that drives or influences spend.

With a common OneWorld FFP the member airlines of OW would loose that flexibility to drive or influence spend, and not directly control the money from the FFP scheme.

Yes it would, so I am just moving it over there.

aks120
Moderator: BAC Forum

this posts suggest there already is an OW 'commission' that members negotiate with....
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/36970087-post119.html

I think we're again here getting to the discussion of the differences between a loyalty program and a frequent flyer aka rewards program.

As KARFA pointed out, these programs have developed from being ways of garnering brand loyalty to supplementary profit centres for airlines. One of the dangers I see is that this trend IMHO contradicts the alliance-like thinking of a group of airlines in that they are all chasing the same revenue, which would indeed favour a loyalty model. The loyalty model however means spending or incentivising passengers to your airline or alliance by investing in them or rewarding them. The current models merely feed back a fraction of what you spend in a more or less predictable way. This removes all aspirational elements of sticking with any particular airline or alliance, inserts the modern transactional nature in the business, removes any possibility of gaming the system for additional elements and consequently makes the schemes (again IMHO) downright boring.

The end result is that the modern schemes do not result in any incentive to fly any particular airline above the transactional cost of each flight booked. Coupling credit card or hotel spend into the same (airline) scheme encroaches on other well-established programs. Other interested parties like American Express, who with their Membership Rewards scheme have been offering the same thing for much longer, and IMHO much better, are far better placed.

I see no place for an alliance-wide FFP within OneWorld or for that matter any of the alliances. Indeed on the contrary, I see the existence of the alliances endangered by current developments, which are also a reflection of more separatist thinking on many levels globally at the moment. My approach has become to now join the FFP of the specific airline you fly the most rather than the alliance as I see further separation, or at least divergence, coming very soon as some airlines object to funding benefits for other competing airlines. Perhaps then we will see loyalty schemes reemerging.

Not sure how you get from A to B to C.

On B.. oneworld operates a single lounge at ICN.. and from the thread on this forum, it's not setting many standards.

There's also the AMS OW lounge.

why shouldn�t there be a multitude of ways to reach the same ow level? You write as if that�s a bad thing but fail to explain why?

what do you mean by benchmark? Easier? There are already airlines ffps which are easier within ow compared to some others. Could you describe what you mean?

Around maybe 2007 the AA CEO actually said they were planning a oneworld points currency. There's probably some old post in the oneworld forum about it.

For status only I actually think it'd be a good idea as it might make it easier for the ordinary man in the street to understand how the process of earning/maintaining status works. Especially for those who fly on more than one OW airline over the course of a year..However outwith the status side of it the airlines would want to keep their own reward programme.
All easier said than done right enough or I suspect it would already be happening.

Kinda related with the OneWorld ecosystem.

Let�s say I�m an AA OW E accessing the AY OW E lounge in HEL � does AA compensate AY for my admission in any way? Or is it just in good faith/reciprocity? 99.9% certain it�s the latter�

No I don�t mean easier, I mean standard or more accurately baseline.

Perhaps an example could illustrate. Imagine the Oneworld baseline was 60 sectors for status. An airline might offer status for 40 sectors on its metal. If a client ran only 30 with the airline and another 30 with other alliance members.they would miss the airlines status but be able to qualify through the Alliance baseline safety net.

As I write that, and given the variety of currencies, earning tables and boosters. I�m probably answering my own question by saying the process is complex, the beneficiaries are few and it�s ultimately not necessary. Market forces alone are enough to keep the alliances in check with no neee for an arbitrary scheme.

Besides, who'd want to join an FFP of an entity that can't even run a booking tool.

What's the business case for having one?

The differences in the economics of reward programs makes an alliance-wide points scheme untenable. In the United States, we have high interchange/merchant fees that fund credit card rewards that essentially drive airline profitability. Other countries have stricter limits on these fees and therefore far less lucrative credit card rewards. An alliance-wide FFP could shift this revenue in ways that I can't see the US3 agreeing to.

As we move forward, I think we're going to continue to see the erosion of brand standards and allow airlines to opt-out of more benefits. Star Alliance allows carriers to restrict access to contract lounges and designate inferior lounges between business class customers and status holders, Skyteam also allows airlines to pick and choose whose members/customers get access to even ordinary lounges. The major players of each alliance control things and if they want a change, they generally get it. Heck IAG has a wholly-owned subsidiary that isn't even a OW member with no plans to join.

Even if there were brand standards on earning status, this would almost certainly be revenue-based or at minimum give leeway to revenue-based programs and would be worse than the BAEC or AA LP schemes. It wouldn't be a backdoor to roll-back changes that these programs have undertaken.