Oneworld, the global airline group featuring airlines including American, British Airways, JAL, Qantas, and Cathay Pacific, is moving from Vancouver to New York next summer. The new headquarters will be in the low-rent district of Manhattan, on 2 Park Avenue.
Former US Airways marketing chief Bruce Ashby will take succeed John McCulloch as chief executive of the group. The Pittsburgh Gazette labels Ashby "a protege of former Chairman Stephen Wolf and former CEO Rakesh Gangwal," which isn’t the most comforting news for Oneworld flyers and anyone who remembers Wolf and Gangwal’s troubled tenures at US Airways.
Surprisingly, Oneworld has only 25 full-time employees but will be sharing the 46,200 foot office with American, BA, and Iberia.
Not a mention of LAN or LATAM in the press release, but I have to imagine that the shakeup at Oneworld might have something to do with that. The alliance choice of LATAM is critical for Star Alliance and Oneworld, though arguably more for Oneworld. While Star has already lined up Avianca and TACA to join Star Alliance, Oneworld would be left with a critical gap in Latin and South America if LAN left Oneworld to join Star Alliance, especially with the demise of Mexicana. With SkyTeam scooping up the remaining airlines in South America like Aerolinas Argentinas, SkyTeam is left with few choices: Brazil’s GOL said it would join Oneworld but later backed out.
Ashby’s got a lot on his plate and his chief task must be to work hard to woo LATAM into Oneworld. But I’m still rooting for Star Alliance…
LAN is not leaving at the Oneworld standard. In my recent trip to Barranquilla Colombia from Miami via Bogota we lost the connection because the Screen of Departures showed an exit 84 until the time of departure and all I got from them was someone angry.
Certainly this is not the Oneworld Alliance I has been flying for more than 20 year.
Last year I did the same route and coming back from Barranquilla they didn’t honor the second luggage.
I am a 1,000,000 miles and a Gold member for more than 10 years.
Robert Britton
Matthew,
How on earth is 2 Park Avenue, between 33rd and 32nd Streets in Midtown, a “low-rent district of Manhattan”?
Really? Come on Matthew.
@WorldTraveler: I used a literary device called an understatement.
🙂
It doesn’t surprise me that they only have 25 employees. I don’t know what they actually do besides solicit for airline members p, have a website and do some marketing.