As partners evolve – Qatar-oneworld, Air France-Etihad/airberlin – how promiscuous can airlines be?

The dominos are falling for airline partnerships breaking out of a mould and aligning with once sworn enemies in the Middle East as well as crossing alliance lines to find more strategic, and profitable, partners. The industry is getting a sudden rush with the oneworld alliance announcing on 08-Oct-2012 that Qatar Airways has been elected as a new member. The oneworld announcement came just a few hours after SkyTeam member Air France-KLM announced a partnership with Etihad Airways as well as Etihad partner and oneworld member airberlin.

As airlines find themselves in this new and relatively uncharted territory, they must seek to integrate their new partners with existing ones - a complex and contradictory process. Overlap will be common, giving rise to an airline's partners mistrusting each other. Incredible potential and synergies could be unlocked from them all, but airlines must find the limit: if Qantas, aligned with Emirates, can work with Qatar; if Emirates can work with American and JetBlue; and if American can bypass British Airways for Qatar's African network? How promiscuous can they be?