LGW-LTN are co-terminals located 51 miles apart. 51 is much closer to 84 than 647!

Nevertheless, neither HKG or CAN are SE Asia.

If I'm going from Penang to Denpasar, either one is quite a detour just to maintain allegiance to an airline marketing alliance.

MH would fill this void nicely for OW (but not likely).

Agreed!

Since 1834 MH is rumored to join Skyteam but not much has eventuated yet.

since 1834 ? which time zone are we talking here ? it is only 1738 in Kuala Lumpur at the moment .

And here in Boston, it's 2009!!!

I might have exaggerated a bit. Sorry, won't happen again.

I think Cathay Pacific currently has agreements with Air China for eg. capability with Asia Miles also codesharing would allow OW's exposure to China.
Furthermore, since Cathay Pacific is an Hong Kong based airline, it would not be surprising to see China may offer all 5th to 8th traffic rights to all Hong Kong passenger and freight carriers as a part of CEPA hence Cathay Pacific can acutally operate in China hence no Chinese carriers is necessary.
For South East Asia Network, I think OW may need more exposure, but it can do it not even to invite a new airline to come in. JetStar Asia/Pacific, a Qantas Group Airline, is now a big profit-driver for Qantas Group. So OneWorld can try to liaise with Qantas to form a new full-service airline or to convert 3K/BL to full service with other OW Airlines - a joint venture project will help simply. This might work even better.
Finally for Brazilian network, I think LAN can try to set up LAN Brazil sometime later as of their other LAN Airlines. I don't think OW will need a new airline for that region tho.
The only region left over might be Central Asia, which would pretty despreate a new airline to join. But I believe 9W and IT knows their position in any alliance is so important hence they will rather not to join at this time until those 3 alliances offer enough prviliages/terms favourable enough for 9W & IT to join.

And Africa? Or does than not feature on your map of the world?

Given S7's pending membership I'm not so sure this region isn't covered adequately, although some route tweaks by S7 would be welcome.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kiwi Flyer

Furthermore Comair claim to be out of the alliance for some purposes (when it suits them) and deny alliance benefits.

I'm interested - what have you experienced? I haven't flown them yet but am planning on doing a JNB-PLZ trip one day - what benefits did they deny?

Quote:

Originally Posted by kiwiandrew

MK ... also serve surprisingly few cities in Africa (CPT, JNB, DUR, NBO on the mainland all of which are already served by Comair...)

Comair don't fly to NBO - you may be thinking of Regional Airlines, which as hauteboy mentioned, aren't a BA franchisee anymore - the franchise was taken away from them in 2005 due to service/standards issues.

I'd like to see Comair expand - regionally and intercontinentally - but they seem to have focused on expanding kulula.com rather than the BA side of things. Their last BA route expansion was to MRU - and that came at the expense of GRJ (personal grrr).

Maybe Comair could start joining up some of the BA dots on the African map, such as JNB-NBO or JNB-LOS - on that last one though it'd be a 737 vs. the 340 of Arik or the 744 of SA unless they got some longhaul aircraft.

Doh ! of course you are correct , I am getting muddled in my old age , nonetheless my point was that MK cannot really offer much in Africa that BA cant already do either directly from LHR ( CPT JNB NBO ) or via their JNB based Comair franchise ( CPT DUR )

For example they weren't giving non-BA OW elites lounge access unless flying business class (especially not good when they operated economy only a/c with invol downgrade).

As comair rather than BA they also avoid EU compensation rules.

Ah, just read your trip report from JNB-WDH on. Crazy and amazing! As for the lounge issue in JNB, was the BA Flounge open at that time? I wonder if you were directed to the J because the BA longhauls weren't until later, so the F wasn't being used yet? Only a guess.

F lounge was open and almost empty.