Just a couple of personal thoughts I figured I'd throw open.

Is Star starting to become ineffective and too large? I can't see the value in having 5 (well 7 technically) carriers in Europe as an example. It was hard enough with 9 or so members to get uniform consistency and "seamless" service and product. Becoming bigger, only means the problems get larger as well, yes?

What is happening with Starnet? It's coming has been longer than the famous 2nd coming of you know who. (No offence - just Oz humour!!). Surely resources and energies would be better put to getting this invaluable piece of technology running to it's full potential rather than running around adding new carriers. Fix the problems in the current grouping first, then worry about adding.

Don't get me wrong - I love my Star, and there is no other option around that comes anywhere near a bull's roar of it. I just think they have had 5 years to get the seamless part of it down pat, and they still can't manage to do so.

Finally - how many members is enough? 20? 25? How many regions can they cover effectively with how many carriers?

Cheers.

LH did promote the new European Star-members (BM, LOT).

LH has an important share-stake in BM (SAS too), and together with former member OS-Groupe (Austrian, Lauda, Tyrolian, who, together with LOT are having miles&more as their own FrequentFlier program) 'serve' LH's strategy to fill their german hubs (FRA, MUC).

SAS has 74% of the stocks in Spanair(JK)

I think some European members are just subsidiaries from the big ones. Star Alliance is playing the "number game" that makes people think they are too large.

Tyrolean shouldn't be considered as a full member, as its a subsidiary from Austrian (same with Lauda).

and Spanair? itself is just another "subsidiary" of SAS.

bmi? just an airline belongs to Lufthansa/SAS.

Apart from the numbers game... they are LONG overdo for an Alliance Wide promotion. With all of these new members joining shortly, they should really launch a new fly x carriers and get y bonus miles promotion.

Whilst i think it is getting large, for the better for us perhaps as we have more carriers we can choose to clock our miles to, but there are some benefits from size for star -

* *a transit buses - you don't need to operate seperate buses for each carrier, such as the *A bus in LAX, NRT, etc. The more carriers, the easier it is.

I'm sure there are other handling, sharing engineering, checkins, loading pax on other *A carriers for missed flights, etc benefits

I noticed OW said it's membership for new airlines was closed until further notice and they were trying to consolidate and improve on the alliance airlines they currently have...

Purely from a passenger perspective Star does need help, but the question is - is it any better than the competition (ie: oneworld, skyteam, wings) and does it add value? The lounge access is great. The lack of a top top tier level (ie: Star Platnum) is bad in that there is no difference to a foreign carrier's rep for the top tier status of your local airline (eg: UA, SQ).. If I make the top tier on UA (eg: 1K) should I not receive something more from the star members than a 1P would? I understand over in oneworld land, emeralds can use F lounges whilst sapphires can only use C lounges. The problem there is though that only several member programs have 3 elite tiers (LH comes to mind).

Having said that I find most star carriers do recognise the elite status (ie: *G). SK is definately the best, and no guesses for who is worst in this regard.

Certainly the airlines love it if they can pour traffic through eachother and boulster their own revenues. In this respect I'd say star and oneworld would be essentially even with the exception that the BA/AA transatlantic issue must hurt both of them in the bottom line whereas UA/LH/BD/SK have it pretty good.

A new alliance wide promo would be good, but don't forget they just had the 55,555 promo so it hasn't been THAT long. The best way that Star could improve, from the selfish elite pax point of view:

1. Get starnet up and running so award and booking availability is real time and available to all carriers. This would also allow proper seemles checkin

2. *P status for the top tier FF members (ie: 100,000 miles+). The perk is top of upgrade lists for oversold flights etc and access to F lounges by Star carriers and perhaps waiving of fees

3. (related to 1) get the whole boarding pass issuance thing fixed. UA should be able to issue for LH and VO, and SQ should be able to issue for NZ, OZ and BD.. etc.. One idea is for all of them to move to a generic "Star Alliance" stock such that each carrier can read the other's generated paper. Surely a paper and time saving device, though with most carriers having different systems no doubt this is way, way, easier said than done.

Finally, quit with the euro and asia carriers. If Star wants to expand, go after EK and SA and to give coverage where it's needed rather than overlapping eachother's backyards (eg: LO/SK/LH/OS and SQ/TG/OZ/NH).

Last but not least, pull QF out of oneworld and into Star!! Yes, I'm dreaming on that one!

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RichardMEL, UA 1K
A Star Alliance Member.

Could Star Alliance tempt Qantas away from Oneworld ?

Actually, its rival SkyTeam Alliance is also playing the number game. Starting 2004, Skyteam is accepting the "Associated Airlines". Eventually the number of airlines in that alliance may pass 20.