Research on the number of FF Members of OneWorld Airlines
 

To All,

I am hoping you can help me with some research for a project I am going to be working on. Would anyone happen to know how many, or where I might find, the total number of frequent flyer members of the One World member airlines and candidate airlines?

As this information will go in a report for a business case prefer to find information in the public domain.

I have tried the search engines and not getting any reliable information. There have been topics on this subject but they are out of date for my purposes and not comprehensive.

Really appreciate any assiatnce.

Best Wishes & Happy New Year

Nicc

Some airlines annual reports and press releases (eg when they pass a milestone number) may have this info.

Also check out the One World website - it may have that info.

I seriously doubt you will find any good info by googling. Most airlines regard this as a trade secret and do not disclose it in any detail, except where required by law. The AC spinoff of their FF plan undoubtedly resulted in disclosure of considerable detail on Aeroplan. The Economist has some past articles on FF plans which were well researched and might have the info you are looking for (free web site http://www.economist.com but requires a subscription to access most of the interesting articles).

Am continuing my research www.webflyer.com
 

Thanks useful sites there. I did a research by using the word 'statistics' given I use it often, should have used it before. Eventually came across an interesting site

www.webflyer.com. Quite a lot of useful data including the facts I wont. Realise will not get active memberships or break down by tiers but does a useful guide to total memberships including dates. Some interesting comparisons to be made.

If anyone has other sources of data would be appreciated!

Thanks

Webflyer are the people that own this site! Need I say much more.

Iberia Plus has 3 million members (source: iberia.com).

Just be aware that statistics for different airlines have different significance. For example some FF plans have a membership fee; that keeps the numbers down. While some of the US plans have millions of dormant members, and many of those are actually duplicate accounts (so they will never fly again, replaced by newer active accounts). A plan with fewer members may represent more FF activity. Not sure that enough publicly released info is available to be able to normalize the statistics to make them comparable.

Yup - membership numbers can be misleading.

In FFPs where they regularly close dormant accounts membership may be more active than other FFPs where accounts can sit empty for years. The T&Cs of the FFP will not necessarily shed light on this since even if an FFP has clause for closing accounts after x years inactivity it doesn't mean the FFP actually does close all such accounts.

The Statistics on OneWorld Members Source WebFlyer
 

In case anyone is interested. The comments above regarding reliability and questions of overlap/inactive accounts are very valid. The key which I do not expect to find is the number of elite status members. While dates are not consistent, all are 2006 at least with the exception of Iberia.

From a OneWorld perspective assuming FF membership is somewhat consistent with loyalty to fly a specific airline/alliance then JAL adds something and losing Aer Lingus is unlikely to have a major impact.


Airline Programme Worldwide Membership Date
American AAdvantage 52,000,000 03/06
British Airways Executive Club 5,100,000 10/06
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles 2,560,000 03/06
Finnair Finnair Plus 350,000 07/02
Iberia Airlines Iberia Plus 1,227,000 08/02
LAN LanPass 1,400,000 02/06
Qantas Airways Frequent Flyer 4,300,000 04/06
Dragonair N/A
Current Total 66,937,000

Japan Airlines JAL Mileage Bank 17,350,000 02/06
Royal Jordanian Royal Club 76,000 04/06
Malev N/A
New Member Totals 17,426,000
TOTAL ONEWORLD FF MEMBERS 84,363,000 (projected)

Aer Lingus Gold Circle Club 211,000 08/02

Any more ideas still appreciated. Thanks for your input

Nicc

Thanks Nicc HK. It is great to have these numbers. There are a few notes:
* I am both an AA member and a MPC member. So there are probably some overlaps.
* Dragonair is an odd case. It is not on board OW yet, but it is on MPC and Asiamiles. So CX and KA shared the same membership. KA is probably going to be an affiliated member in OW.

By the way, do you have an updated information on these numbers on elite memberships? Thanks.

And these figures mean.....????

Consider that BA and AA are roughly the same size airline (in terms of revenue). Yet BAEC is 10% of AAdvantage membership -- not a surprise in view of the structure of the 2 plans.

Probably a more representative measure of plan size is the number of FF miles outstanding (accrued but not yet used for awards). Certainly that is what drives future award redemptions (and rule changes!). That is a number that can be easily reverse engineered from various SEC filings and the annual reports of publicly traded airlines, as it is a liability that is on the books, albeit well obfuscated (and for good reason).

A suggestion/tip: Use 'CODE' tags to format:

Iberia Pluss FF program has recently reached 3,000,000 members .


Iberia Plus requires paying a fee ( first year free) and dormant users and points (miles) are removed periodically when innactive .


Iberia Plus is the oldest european airline fidelity program , and took AA program as model .

It was launched in September 1991 , months before BA's .


1991......63.336
1992.....113.152
1993.....163.268
1994.....257.827
1995.....347.717
1996.....456.342
1997.....563.000
1998.....678.000
1999.....775.000
2000.....953.000
2001....1.067.033
2002....1.254.000
2003....1.700.000
2004....2.000.000
2005....2.200.000
2006....2.800.000

Thanks and Sources
 

Cuetro, Quite impressive, please can you let me know the source as for my research I can only use data which is in the public domain.

Serfty, As you can guess I am not the most technically proficient person on PCs, and thanks for the tip!

Most appreciated the assistance here!

Nicc

Did you read post #6?