oneworld airlines renew their commitment to build on the value the alliance offers customers worldwide - including a standard oneworld livery

The heads of all oneworld^® member airlines today renewed their companies' commitment to the alliance.  They pledged to step up their own carriers' oneworld activities across all areas, from customer service through sales, marketing and distribution to sharing best practice and cost reduction.

The overall aim is to build on the added value oneworld enables them to deliver to their customers and achieve further progress towards oneworld's objective of establishing itself as the leading quality alliance.  To symbolize this renewed commitment, all the alliance's member airlines are to decorate a proportion of their aircraft fleets in a standard oneworld livery. 

Their pledge was made as the chief executives from all oneworld member airlines met to mark the 10^th anniversary of the alliance's launch, gathering in the Madrid base of the alliance's first recruit, Iberia.

Speaking on their behalf, oneworld Governing Board Chairman Gerard Arpey, Chairman and Chief Executive of American Airlines, said:  "oneworld has made an important contribution in helping our partner airlines endure a tumultuous decade while still achieving the best collective profitability of any alliance. 

"Our ongoing focus on quality will not waver.  While our combined network is unmatched, our focus has always been on quality rather than quantity, on service rather than size.  This is what makes oneworld stand out as an alliance - and that will not change.

"The decade to come will bring additional challenges, so we're going to work even harder to make sure oneworld creates value for our member airlines and delivers more services and benefits to our customers - hopefully with the benefit later this year of anti-trust immunity between our transatlantic oneworld partners, enabling us to compete on more equal terms with other alliances.

"Today my colleagues and I renewed our commitment for oneworld to further integrate the alliance and all its activities more closely into our own airlines in every area - enabling us to unlock even more of the alliance's potential for all its stakeholders."

Besides the standard oneworld livery, this pledge is also reflected in new design guidelines covering how the oneworld brand name and logo will be used by oneworld airlines. 

All of them will now feature the oneworld logo on a far more extensive range of applications than before.  Wherever customers see their own airline brand names and logos, from television commercials to First Class menus, they will also now see the oneworld brand name and logo. 

oneworld Vice-President Commercial Nicolas Ferri explained:  "In its first decade, oneworld has established itself among its key target audience - frequent international business travellers - as a well recognised, quality brand.  The steps we are unveiling today are designed to remind all our customers how oneworld can make their travel easier and more rewarding.

"Air travellers see an alliance as an important addition to what their own preferred airline can do.  As a result, oneworld's role is to complement and strengthen what each of our individual member airlines offers, not replace or replicate them.

"The many initiatives we are unveiling today, and others to follow in the future, are built on this philosophy. We are linking oneworld more closely with each member airline throughout their journey, as a statement of the value the alliance adds to its customers and to its own business."

To highlight its 10^th birthday, oneworld has also today unveiled a special version of its logo, featuring the text "ten years" printed behind the word oneworld as a "watermark" on its round blue orb.  This will be used extensively by the alliance and its member airlines in place of the regular oneworld logo on all printed materials and websites for the year ahead.

The new standard oneworld aircraft livery is based on special designs already rolled out in the past year by Finnair to mark the 10th anniversary of its invitation to join the alliance and by LAN to highlight the first anniversary of its affiliates LAN Argentina and LAN Ecuador joining oneworld.

Now aircraft operated by all the alliance's airlines will bear the shared livery, which features the oneworld name in large letters, up to almost two metres tall, and the oneworld logo along the side of their fuselage, against a white or a polished metal background.

The name of the operating airline will be placed in smaller lettering in a standard position at the front of the aircraft below the oneworld name and logo.  Each carrier will also retain its own regular tailfin design.

From now, every airline in the alliance will decorate a proportion of its fleet in the oneworld livery - around 40 aircraft in total, mainly types that fly on international routes.

They will be decorated in their new alliance design progressively in the year ahead.   Among the first of them unveiled was an Iberia Airbus A320, on display at its Madrid hub today as Chief Executives from all oneworld member airlines met in the city to mark the alliance's 10^th birthday. 

The alliance livery and new brand guidelines were developed by the alliance's in-house design team, with its marketing agency Imagination and representatives from each member airline's design department.

Pictures and logo

High resolution, print quality images can be downloaded from www.oneworld.com/ow/news-and-information/corporate-image-gallery:

• Aircraft from each oneworld member airline in their oneworld livery,  by selecting "aircraft" in the drop down menu at the member airlines' images section
• oneworld's 10th anniversary logo from the logos section

About oneworld

oneworld brings together some of the best and biggest names in the airline business - American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN, Malév Hungarian Airlines, Qantas and Royal Jordanian, and around 20 affiliates including American Eagle, Dragonair, LAN Argentina, LAN Ecuador and LAN Peru.  Mexicana and its affiliate Click Mexicana will join the alliance later in 2009. 

Between them, these airlines:

• Serve almost 700 airports in nearly 150 countries, with some 8,500 daily departures.
• Offer some 550 airport lounges for premium customers.
• Carry 330 million passengers a year.
• Employ 300,000 people.
• Operate almost 2,300 aircraft.
• Generate US$100 billion annual revenues.

oneworld is the only alliance with any member airlines based in Australia, South America or Asia's Middle East.

The alliance enables its members to offer their customers more services and benefits than any airline can provide on its own.  These include a broader route network, opportunities to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles and points across the combined oneworld network and more airport lounges.  

oneworld was voted the World's Leading Airline Alliance for the sixth year running in the latest (2008) World Travel Awards.   It is the only winner of this award since it was introduced in 2003.