Air Berlin has formally announced its date of ascent into the OneWorld alliance, and it’s the 20th March 2012 according to the PR at http://www.airberlin.com/site/pressnews_dr.php?ID=3613&LANG=eng.
After the 20th March, they will be a full members and NIKI will be joining OneWorld as an affiliate member.
Already codesharing with some members of the alliance, joining OneWorld will increase the network coverage to 840 destinations in 150 countries. Air Berlin will over connections in Germany, Southern and Central Europe, adding 70 destinations to the OneWorld map.
Getting onto miles, earning will start on the 20th March with OneWorld member miles dumpable in AirBerlin’s Top Bonus Accounts. Similarly, Air Berlin/NIKI segments will then be available for dumping into other OneWorld member accounts for your tier points and tier bonuses. Redemptions will also open up too on NIKI and Air Berlin.
Earning rates have of course not been disclosed at this time.
Air Berlin have their problems (and it seems OneWorld is attracting airlines that seem to be falling down – Mexicana who fell, Malev who seem to be trying to stave off bankruptcy proceedings and KingFisher who are not in the greatest of states), but hopefully this should give Air Berlin a welcome boost.
Are you sure you want to use the word accent and not ascent?
Accent is “prominence of a syllable in terms of differential loudness, or of pitch, or length, or of a combination of these.”
(Wanted to email this to you instead of posting, but didn’t see how i can do that. 😉 )
Heh. Corrected. My copy of the OED is at home 😉
Ascent? From the looks of it, entering OneWorld is a decent!
It’s interesting times for the alliance. What were “Hot picks” for entry a couple of years ago seem to be bad choices now. Certainly a bit of remedial work could be what the doctor ordered for OneWorld…