So as revealed yesterday, Air Berlin has formally invited to join OneWorld with a memorandum of understanding signed.
So lets take a deeper look.
Air Berlin itself will join OneWorld as a full member, with Niki joining as well as a OneWorld affiliate (as at is owned partially by Air Berlin).
They will both be joining OneWorld in early 2012 (with no defined actual date yet), although they are trying to join just before the new Berlin Airport is opened.
Air Berlin is more “the friendly face of Low Cost Carriers”, with some better features like free luggage and full on board service (including their long haul services which they obtained when purchasing LTU). In short haul, it’s the usual single class cabin, whilst on longer haul services, they offer two-class services onboard their A330’s.
Air Berlin carriers 28 million passengers a year, with 165 aircraft, to a total of 160 destinations over 40 countries, and when it joins OneWorld – this will expand its coverage to 900 destinations in 150 countries. Nearly all OneWorld members serve Air Berlin Germany, and the interlining and codesharing will increase access to the world.
Which increases the coverage of the alliance by a fair amount.
Air Berlin now has the hard task of preparing its systems to move over to OneWorld, and developing the codeshare and bilatteral agreements to make this work – that’s why there’s a minimum of 18 months before they formally join OneWorld (and typical of most airlines – save Air India who is still dawdling over it’s Star Alliance membership)
British Airways (who is also looking after S7 and Kingfisher) as they complete their joining of OneWorld) will be supporting it’s membership and it’s implementation.
This is a very interesting play, and there are two things to look at carefully (and neither directly related to Air Berlin.
Firstly – LCC’s (or “better class” LCC’s) are now serious contenders for major alliance memberships. As some major legacy carriers scrape the barrel and try to cut costs, they’re looking more looking like LCC’s.
And that puts JetBlue sharply into focus – again, a single class airline, but again – an acceptable face of LCC’s. With it’s recent tie up with American Airlines, could alliance membership be around the corner for it?
And will that push some of the legacy carriers that own LCC’s to push them into the major alliances? I’m not sure at this point, but surely, this is causing minor concern in Star Alliance HQ/SkyTeam HQ, and will force them to consider their future membership plans….
Secondly, I can’t help thinking that the about to be formed “International Airlines Group” is paying very close attention. A ready made footprint like that, combined with the might of BA and Iberia would really allow it to go toe-to-toe with Lufthansa and Air France-KLM in Europe…
