Some thoughts on what Ole Orvér will want to accomplish now that he’s in the top job:

Hawaiian

oneworld will become a 16-airline alliance for the first time on April 22, when Hawaiian Airlines joins as a full member.

It will also be the first time any alliance will have three US-based members. While American has struggled in New York and Chicago, the alliance is collectively carving out a strong position in the west: once Hawaiian joins, oneworld will have powerful global hubs in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Honolulu.

Tech

Orvér’s predecessor, Nat Pieper, spoke extensively about a “common digital platform” during his time at oneworld.

Right now, traveling with more than one airline in the alliance means getting familiar with multiple booking codes, websites, and apps. Plus, in a multi-city trip, ‘Airline A’ doesn’t know you’re connecting to a flight on ‘Airline B,’ which makes everything from bag tracking to delays a headache.

The goal is to make traveling across oneworld airlines feel just as seamless as traveling with one of them. Here’s Pieper on Airlines Confidential:

What we’re shooting for is, it shouldn’t matter which oneworld airline you’re traveling with. If you are most comfortable with one specific airline’s app, you ought to be able to track and use that app for your experience across the entire journey.

That’s been a project at oneworld for a long time. Per Pieper, it started several years before he took over in 2024.

Upgrades

oneworld has also been trying to get its airlines to offer points-based upgrades to each other’s customers. It’s a simple concept: allow members of one airline’s program to use their points for an upgrade on a different oneworld airline, even if the home airline wasn’t involved in the booking.

In June 2024, oneworld’s Gerhard Girkinger told Executive Traveller:

Cross-airline upgrades are “a core element to the customer proposition and what we want to provide our customers… it’s going to be in a smaller scale initially, and then grow from there.”

It’s been a slow journey. As of today, only American and Qantas offer integrated reciprocal points upgrades.¹

Lounges

Airlines with a limited presence at an airport can’t justify the cost of operating a lounge individually, but they can collectively. That’s why oneworld started opening its own lounges in 2024.

The first two are in Seoul and Amsterdam, and more are on the way. Pieper told Head for Points the same year that another lounge could come “anytime within the next 6 to 12 months,” and the goal is to open up to 10 over the next few years:

I think, from our perspective, we want to have another three to five to ten lounges over the next five years. We have a good couple folks within the oneworld team allocated to that task, flying all over the place, meeting with airport authorities.

Diplomacy

Orvér spent four years at Qatar during his career, so he’ll be well aware that airlines don’t always get along. His time at the Doha-based airline came just before American’s CEO accused it of competing unfairly in the US market; a few years later, Qatar went to war with Qantas over flight rights into Australia and its partnership with Emirates.

Qatar is back on good terms with American, but their relationship with Qantas is in rough shape. Last year, Qatar bought 25% of Virgin Australia, and the two airlines began a partnership that sees Virgin use Qatar jets and crews under a five-year wet lease deal and offer deep reciprocal loyalty benefits.

You have to wonder what Qatar’s vision for Virgin is, and whether that will ever conflict with Qatar or Qantas’ membership in oneworld. Qatar has threatened to leave the alliance before, and it tried to get Qantas kicked out in 2022; a threat the airline took seriously enough to ask for other members’ support.²

The 6%

Then there’s new members. With 16 airlines, oneworld is the smallest of the three alliances (Star Alliance has 26, SkyTeam has 18).

I’ve always gotten the sense that oneworld would rather have the largest share of premium traffic than a larger share of all traffic. Here’s Pieper saying a version of that with Business Traveler last year:

“It’s easier to coordinate across 15 than across 28. And we have a strong concentration of premium carriers. That’s our differentiator,” he said.

Emerald status, which unlocks first-class lounge access globally, is an offering no other alliance matches. “It’s a halo benefit that helps our members attract and retain high-value customers,” Pieper noted.

That doesn’t mean membership is closed. According to oneworld, the alliance covers 94% of what it calls “global air travel demand.” If you’re looking to join oneworld, you’ll want to cover the 6%.

Pieper said just a few months ago that the airlines had a collective interest in finding a partner in India. That would almost certainly mean IndiGo,³ which partnered with four SkyTeam members last year, but also has ties with American, British, JAL, Qantas, and Qatar.

The alliance also has holes in South America and Africa.

Qatar might help with the latter; their former CEO said in 2022 that the airline would do “everything within our ability” to bring RwandAir into the alliance.

Taiwan’s Starlux has also expressed interest in joining oneworld, and both Condor (Germany) and Porter (Canada) are reportedly considering it.

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1. Alaska and American have their own partnership, allowing each other’s customers to get free upgrades where available, and the Avios airlines have varying degrees of upgrade integration, but AA and QF are the only two who’ve integrated in the way oneworld described it. ↩︎
2. As reported in Joe Aston’s The Chairman’s Lounge. According to the same book, American’s Robert Isom eventually intervened to keep them both in the alliance. ↩︎
3. The only other major airline, Air India, is a Star Alliance member. ↩︎