Over the past few years, excessive column inches have been devoted to Qatar Airways and their intention to leave the oneworld alliance. Happily all of this appears to be in the past, with the airline’s CEO now happy to stay in the alliance.
Akbar Al Baker has made no bones about the fact he and Qatar Airways were unhappy with certain airlines in the alliance. The news most issues are now resolved is good news for frequent flyers.
Qatar Happy To Stay In Oneworld
At the Future Travel Experience APEX virtual expo, he was questioned about the intentions around oneworld. He replied, “This problem has been resolved. Now we have a very good relation with American… have a very good relation with everybody else.”
Those following the news will remember that American Airlines and Qatar Airways fell out over apparently state support and subsidies. That war was put to bed and AA and QR reinstated their codeshare deal earlier this year. Happy families once again!
Qatar also had issues with Australia’s Qantas, with the main issue being Qantas having a close partnership with Emirates. It appears Al Baker wants Qatar and Qantas to get into bed together, but the Emirates partnership prevents that. Qantas and Emirates joined up together in an independent partnership in 2013, which began about six months or so before Qatar Airways joined oneworld.
The five year partnership was extended by the same period again, meaning it will run through to March 2023. You can bet on it that Qatar will try to replace Emirates at that time. Al Baker commented, “We have still not the kind of relation I’m looking for with Qantas” – so time will tell what happens here.
Overall Thoughts
I am glad Qatar Airways is happy to stay in the oneworld alliance. This is, of course, because I hold a frequent flyer card with the alliance. Due to that, I almost exclusively fly with airlines in the alliance and if Qatar left, I’d no longer have any incentive to travel with them.
When it comes to Qantas, I am quite interested to see what will happen there. Will Qantas play off Emirates and Qatar against each other to leverage a deal? Will they just stick with Emirates? It will be an interesting thing to watch in a year to 18 months time.
What do you think of Qatar Airways deciding to remain in the oneworld alliance? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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I’m happy that Qatar is sticking around, particularly with Alaska joining Oneworld in March. As a US resident I hope that Alaska will allow awards on Qatar from North America to Asia/Australia. Using AA miles precludes this routing so having another viable option would be nice.
Alaska have always had a well respected frequent flyer programme, so fingers crossed they do allow something like that. I don’t see why something like that would be excluded. It would be going the long way around though, but hey, if people want to do it, why not! Not like it would be a hardship in Qatar business class anyway!
While nothing is certain, I can’t see Qantas proactively dropping Emirates for Qatar. Emirates has significantly more frequency into Australia than Qatar, so there is less to gain for Qantas. Qantas effectively removed one of their biggest international competitors through that partnership. Qatar certainly hasn’t helped itself recently either….
Oh, I agree, it’s far from certain that anything will change. It would have to be a compelling offer for Qantas to ditch Emirates, in my opinion, though that could well occur. Nothing is ever certain in aviation and stranger things have happened. Keeps things interesting at the very least!