TAM's join to oneworld is confirmed. Again.

The only surprise in today’s announcement from TAM that they will officially be moving from Star Alliance to oneworld in 2014 is that there is finally a date behind the change. Sortof. The company has set a target for the move in the second quarter of 2014 but still does not have a specific date. They expect to announce that later date, well, later. The shift was virtually guaranteed by the merger of TAM with LAN, as well as the merger between TACA and Avianca; authorities indicated that both groups could not be in the same alliance.

This move consolidates much of the South American market into the oneworld alliance. With the impending American Airlines/US Airways merger it also shifts much of the traffic between the Americas into oneworld. In other news out today, Finnair is seeking to join the ATI-protected joint venture for transatlantic travel currently composed of American, British Airways and Iberia. No real surprise there, either, and it seems unlikely that there will be much in the way of objections to that move.

Oneworld is seeing big gains these days, both through mergers and through natural growth in the Middle East and South Asia. While the mergers overall are reducing competition shifts like this do seem to balance out the alliance competition levels a bit, even if some of the markets become near-monopolies.

TAM has provided a FAQ here which doesn’t have a ton of details. The press release from oneworld has a few more bits to it.

PS- Here is the obligatory, "don’t worry, your points are all fine" comment because inevitably someone will ask. It is at least a year yet before anything changes.

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6 Comments

As I just posted over at Gary’s blog: Unless they open up more award space once they join OW, though, their addition will be pretty much non-news — at least on the redemption side. I’m GRU-based and have only ever been able to redeem on JJ once, GRU/EZE/GRU, and it’s not for lack of checking! 🙂

Oneworld keeps touting Latin America (since that’s their strength) but completely forgot that it’s mainland China that’s the world’s next superpower and has 20% of the world’s population.

Oneworld is the only alliance that doesn’t have any carriers based inside mainland China, and oneworld is also the only alliance that doesn’t have any carriers based in Africa.

@Jackie – Actually, British Airways owns Comair, which is based in Africa and a Oneworld affiliate member.

@Miles – I don’t know if i’d count Comair. The have a very limited route network and almost all their flights are within South Africa. *A has EgyptAir, Ethiopian, and South African airlines. ST has Kenya Airways. OneWorld really can’t compare.