Aviation Intermediate Conversation Lesson: Airline Global Alliances
Before your trial lesson, listen to the audio recording whilst reading the text. Additionally, study the 5 questions to gain an understanding of the topics and themes that will be covered during your online trial conversation lesson.
An airline alliance is an aviation industry partnership between airlines which agree to cooperate in a variety of commercial processes. Such alliances normally offer single branding to facilitate travellers making smooth inter-airline code-share connections throughout the world. Additionally, this branding often involves unified liveries of member aircraft, thus enhancing promotion of the brand throughout the world.
There are three global alliances, namely oneworld, Star Alliance and SkyTeam. Commercially, typical benefits include a number of factors such as an extended worldwide network through code-share agreements as well as cost reduction from sharing sales offices, maintenance facilities, support facilities like catering and computer systems, shared ground operations staff, and joint investments and equipment purchases to negotiate volume discounts on new aircraft and other supplies.
Customer benefits include lower prices due to cost savings on given routes; more departure times to choose from on specific city pairs; shorter travel times as a result of optimised transfer connections; a much wider range of shared member airport lounges; shared fast-track access on all member flights for frequent flyers as well as faster redemption of loyalty rewards by earning mileage through a single account for all member carriers.
However, global alliances may create disadvantages for customers such as higher prices when competition is reduced on certain routes. Also, two member airlines, both operating on the same route, often coordinate flight schedules to reduce frequency with the purpose of saving costs and increasing profitability.
5 Key topics for discussion in the conversation lesson
1. Summarise briefly the article and your initial reaction to it.
2. Explain the most obvious common factor shared by aircraft owned by alliance airlines.
3. Name and describe the main global alliances and their most important member airlines.
4. Detail some of the benefits of airline alliances shared by their customer members.
5. Describe two negative aspects of airline alliances.
https://www.staralliance.com/en/about
https://www.skyteam.com/en/about
https://www.oneworld.com/about-the-oneworld-alliance
