Oneworld Expansion Not Expected
 

Mexicana and S7 Airlines completes oneworld. With the addition of Mexicana later this year and Russia's S7 Airlines in 2010, oneworld largely will be complete, Arpey said. The alliance sees little opportunity for further expansion without diluting the revenue and traffic base of existing members. It said interline revenue rose 10% in 2008 to $2.4 billion as 8 million passengers transferred between members' flights. Turnover from alliance fares and sales activity increased 25% to $850 million. The alliance said members lost a combined $1.7 billion last year…. re: Air Transport World

So we're leaving a big hole in China and India? Bad move... :(

Personally, I don't see the situation in China as that bad. CX and KA do provide some level of service. India has Jet Airways partnership with AA.

What about Africa? Comair has a very limited route network, South Africa and MRU. Then you have those five BA destinations which sort of count as Europe. But really nothing intra-continent.

BRASIL too!

Canada
New Zealand
India
China
most of Africa
Western Europe (apart from Spain)

That would leave out all Chinese domestic connections out of PEK and PVG plus all traffic between China and Korea. Not a wise move considering where the growth is.

Where does the original quote come from? Is this real?

Amen to that. No OW connections between ICN-PEK, ICN-PVG, or various domestic flights within China itself is a disasterous move that can cripple OW in the future. By lacking Brazil, India and China (three big countries with huge populations and with large domestic potential), OW cannot compete in the 21st century.

Also one needs to consider the reality that is taking place right now in Asia. NRT is fastly losing ground to ICN as an East Asian hub, HKG is starting to slack against the new financial hub Shanghai. PEK's economical and political influence is growing exponentially in that region. Fifty years down the road, it's going to be India and Mumbai that will overtake China and Shanghai as the most populous country/city in the world.

OW should seriously take a second look at their alliance in geo-political and geo-economical terms on a worldwide scale and fifty years down the road. Which countries are going to be the key players in the 21st century? Any economics guru will say BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Yay, so we got S7 for Russia. That's 1 down, 3 to go.

If Lan had its say in the matter, it would already be in Brazil. I think it's only a matter of time. Besides CX and KA, JL has a decent number of flights to China. India and China cannot and will not be left out. Arpey (if you take him for the truth) only said that the alliance will be "largely" complete. He did not say it was totally complete. Fifty years. Oneworld has only been around for 10 and people are already calling for its demise. I can only imagine the naysayers in 50 years.

Direct? It's a bit silly to count connections via Japan or HK - if you do that then OW has pretty much has the world covered.

I posted a thread a while ago asking what makes an alliance strong - at least from the airline's perspective (after all if it is not good for the airline the alliance eventually will cease to exist) - I had always thought that OW did the right thing by limiting the number of partners thereby maximizing the benefits for each carrier in terms of through traffic from the other alliance airlines. Reading the latest news from OW on the OW website it appears that this is exactly the situation, which means that limiting the number of airlines means greater benefits for those that are in the alliance. For instance - if I wanted to get from NYC to KUL using OW - realistically I will either fly JL or CX all the way, or possibly AA to NRT and then JL - but basically JL or CX will benefit from me wanting to get to KUL. With *A the pax wanting to get from NYC to KUL has so many options - SQ/TG/OZ/NH/CA. I acknowledge that the larger alliance means more travellers but I still think too many airlines starts to defeat the objective. Having said all that I do agree that OW needs a presence in China and India and Africa and I hope that LA manages to get a foothold in Brazil. But keep the expansion really focused and limited and keep the alliance strong.

that is fine so long as the alliance you are with actually flies where you want to go . My understanding is that after all the officially pending members are added to the alliances OW will fly to 'nearly' 750 airports in 'almost' 150 countries ( as per the OW press release announcing S7s membership ) while Star will fly to 'over' 1000 airports in 176 countries ( as per the *A press release announcing A3s membership ) if I had regular business in a destination that is not served by a particular alliance that is going to affect my decision-making for most/all my travel - I admit that each alliance has gaps in coverage , but it would seem that OW will have more gaps / less coverage than the other two alliances ( I dont have the figures for Skyteam but last time I checked they covered around 900 destinations as well - obviously they may lose some with the loss of CO and CM and gain some with the addition of VN but when the reckoning is done they are still likely to come out ahead of OW )

Huh? More options are good. If there is only 1 or 2 flights and these have no availability for awards or reasonable fares when you want to go, then the so called strong alliance isn't much good. Worse still many places are not served at all, and even more routes have service - not much use having service to both origin and destination if flying between them requires routing via other places thousands of miles off course (eg ICN-NRT-PEK).