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AVIATION
BOONSONG KOSITCHOTETHANA
Oneworld, the world's third largest airline alliance, says it has financially outperformed two rival blocs last year _ Star Alliance and SkyTeam _ with a higher average operating margin and record revenues.
Based on the 2007 data from members of the the world's three principal alliances, Oneworld's average operating margin was 6.4%, against 5.8% for Star and 5.6% for SkyTeam.
Oneworld claims the best financial track record of any airline grouping even as some members posted losses.
Over the past three years, the combined net profit of Oneworld member airlines totalled US$8.8 billion, while SkyTeam members have lost $6.9 billion and Star's partners have reported collective losses of $10.1 billion.
Oneworld, which has 10 members including British Airways and Cathay Pacific, also reported a 19% jump in interline revenues within the alliance to $2.2 billion, with revenue generated by Oneworld fares and sales activity exceeding $725 million, a 10% increase.
Eight million passengers were transferred between Oneworld members' flights during the year, 6% more than in 2006, Oneworld managing partner John McCulloch told reporters on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) annual general meeting in Istanbul last week.
A key driver to Oneworld's record revenues was membership expansion, with Japan Airlines, Malev Hungarian Airlines and Royal Jordanian joining as full members and LAN Argentina, LAN Ecuador and Dragonair as affiliates.
Mr McCulloch said that Oneworld, which claims to be the only alliance with a truly global network, hoped to include airlines in mainland China and India to expand its global coverage.
While he confirmed that Oneworld was in talks with China Eastern, he declined to name any Indian airline with whom discussions were going on. However, the names bandied about are Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines.
Kingfisher has yet to start its international operations, which is a pre-requisite for joining an alliance. The merged Air India has already been invited to join competing Star Alliance.
Mr McCulloch said that Oneworld was keen to add British Airways' new OpenSkies subsidiary, which launches its first flight this month between Paris Orly and New York JFK.
Oneworld airlines serve 700 airports in 150 countries, operating almost 2,500 aircraft and employing 250,000 people. Later this year it will become the first in the industry to sell multi-airline round-the-world trips online.
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