These three alliances have been forming, growing and shifting for some time now and it is almost fair to say that they’ve reached a certain maturity that lets us take a look at what the future might hold.

 

There will always be shifts between alliances as time goes by but the major structures are now in place and let’s be honest in that airlines are not equal partners in these alliances.  There are bedrock airlines and there are airlines who are really more associate partners. 

 

In the Star Alliance, US Airways has definitely been more of an associate member than, say, United, Lufthansa or Singapore Airlines and with the recent addition of Continental and the close partnership its formed with United, US Airways is even more the redheaded step-child in this organization. 

 

SkyTeam really has the strongest core though.  Formed, in part, from the original Northwest / KLM alliance that began in the 90’s, it now has an extremely strong network that spans both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.  If it has a weakness, it is in South America among South American carriers and I’m not sure if that is really a weakness right now.  

 

The Star Alliance and SkyTeam have both managed to work among themselves in pretty close partnership and develop strong networks playing on each others’ strengths.  Schedules between those partnership airlines are pretty rational and they do tend to treat affiliate partners as having value in the organizations.

 

Then there is Oneworld.  Oneworld isn’t so much a partnership alliance as it is a looser affiliation of airlines.  To be sure, at one time Oneworld’s members represented a very strong core of airlines who were profitable and very strong on a global level.  To a degree, they still are but this has definitely become the weak alliance over time and with the fight over JAL taking place, its now fighting for its life.

 

Oneworld doesn’t know how to work well with each other.  Partners American Airlines and British Airways have dominated that relationship and because of their obstinance over trans-Atlantic routes and slots at Heathrow, they haven’t been able to work closely together over time and develop those relationships that have been grown in other alliances.  Because of their dominance, other potential strengths in their network, QANTAS, JAL and Cathay Pacific for instance, haven’t really been exploited fully either. 

 

Oneworld is, for most intents and purposes, an old style Anglo-American relationship with AA, BA, QANTAS and Cathay Pacific dominating that alliance.  (If you don’t think Cathay Pacific is Anglo, look up its history and its executive team.)

 

If Oneworld loses JAL, I’m not sure this alliance survives in the long run.  It cannot afford to be an alliance with two dominant partners (AA and BA) and it cannot afford to lose even one trans-Pacific partner.  If JAL moves over to SkyTeam, then I suspect over the next few years we’ll see one or more “majors” in that relationship find homes elsewhere. 

 

No matter what Oneworld does, they lose a major network in Japan if JAL leaves the alliance and they have no hope of luring ANA over to their alliance either.   The best they can hope to do is build their routes systems into Japan with more direct flights from outside Japan.  That isn’t very satisfactory. 

 

They already lack a major partner in China itself (Cathay Pacific isn’t quite that kind of partner) and lack a major partner centered in Korea and Southeast Asia/India. 

 

I suspect we’ll see one or more core partners in Oneworld slip away to one of the other alliances.  It wouldn’t be too hard to attract LAN away from Oneworld, for instance.  Nor would it be difficult to perhaps walk Cathay Pacific away from Oneworld.   That would leave three basic Anglo American core partners who have no harmonized strategy and not much to offer smaller affiliate partners either. 

 

What’s more, JAL doesn’t need their money now that they’ve gone into bankruptcy.  The Japanese government is financing them and will provide all the capital they need at this point since they have little choice to do anything else.  That means JAL is free to consider a long term strategy and if it can get some real signal that anti-trust immunity would be granted to a partnership between Delta and JAL and the rest of SkyTeam, that’s their best deal.

 

It has occurred to me that the reason there hasn’t been more worry about the dominance such an anti-trust immunity would grant is that, maybe, Delta has signaled its willingness to draw down its legacy network to and inside of Japan that it gained in its Northwest Airlines purchase.  Northwest Airlines not only had a strong system to Japan, it also had a strong network system of flights originating from Japan to regional Asian destinations.

 

If Delta is willing to let JAL fly that system on its behalf, that may well satisfy regulators in the United States.

Filed under: Airline News, Airline Service, Airlines Alliances by ajax