Thanks to Delta and LATAM entering a partnership, the South American airline will leave the oneworld alliance. The final day for membership will be 30 April 2020 and LATAM leaves oneworld on 1 May 2020.

Anyone seeing this would automatically think that’s it. No more frequent flyer miles or recognition, goodbye reciprocal lounge access and all the rest of it. However, that may not be the case.

LATAM Leaves Oneworld

The press release issued by oneworld is quite specific in stating benefits will be offered up to and including 30 April 2020. After that is an interesting line which is wholly non-committal.

It states that “A number of oneworld member airlines plan to maintain frequent flyer agreements with LATAM after 30 April”. Alas, it doesn’t go into specifics and says to contact your airline specifically.


However, when LATAM leaves oneworld, apparently frequent flyer relationships will remain with every single airline currently in the alliance with the exception of American Airlines.

The Points Guy specifically notes that LATAM said that reciprocal lounge access, elite loyalty benefits and the ability to earn and redeem frequent flyer points will remain.

But For How Long?

Qantas have a note on their web site already, which states that frequent flyers will have all benefits up until 30 September 2020. From 1 October, people will earn frequent flyer points but no status credits. This was the original leaving date for LATAM before it was brought forward.

Other airlines like Cathay Pacific, British Airways, Finnair (who still list LATAM as LAN and TAM!), Malaysia Airlines, Iberia, and Japan Airlines mention nothing. Qatar Airways note they will offer benefits up to 30 April 2020 and “Qatar Airways is involved in ongoing discussions with LATAM Airlines Group on how the two airlines can continue to work together to benefit our passengers post LATAM’s exit from oneworld”.

Overall Thoughts

While it clearly sucks to be an American Airlines AAdvantage member in this instance, it looks like all the rest of us are going to be okay when LATAM leaves oneworld. At least for the time being, anyway!

From what I can gather it is too early at this point for all the other airlines to announce anything. We will need to wait and see just how close the relationships going forward will be. However, let’s hope reciprocal lounge access and the ability to earn status will remain.

What do you think will happen when LATAM leaves oneworld? Is there a best and worst case scenario? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image via oneworld on Facebook.