Malaysia Airlines set to join oneworld

MANILA, Philippines - Malaysia Airlines has started the final countdown towards joining the oneworld global airline alliance on Feb. 1.

Final preparations are being put to a massive communications program to highlight the development, which is a key element of the Malaysian national flag carrier’s turnaround strategy and comes as it marks 40 years of delivering its unique Malaysian hospitality to its guests since it first took to the skies as Malaysia Airlines.

The airline will be staging two days of celebrations from tomorrow to mark its addition to the world’s premier airline alliance.

Senior executives from the existing partners of the award-winning global alliance will be flying into Kuala Lumpur to welcome Malaysia Airlines as the newest member of their airline family.

On Feb. 1, its first day as part of the alliance, representatives from all oneworld member airlines will join Malaysia Airlines’ Group CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya and his top team at KL International Airport to welcome passengers on the airline’s first departures offering oneworld services and benefits.

Becoming part of oneworld represents the latest key step by the Malaysian flag carrier and multi award winner in its repositioning program.  It will fly alongside some of the biggest and best known brands in the world airline industry – airberlin, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN, Qantas, Royal Jordanian and Russia’s S7 Airlines.

In the 15 years since global airline alliances first emerged, oneworld and the other two have grown to such an extent that their member airlines now account for some two-thirds of total global airline capacity.

Malaysia Airlines’ addition to oneworld will expand the alliance’s global coverage to more than 840 destinations in 155 countries, served by some 9,000 departures a day operated by a combined fleet of some 2,500 aircraft, carrying nearly 340 million passengers a year, with annual revenues of $110 billion.