oneworld wins first 'best airline alliance' award in poll of frequent flyers

26 settembre 2002

oneworld™ has been named the world's Best Airline Alliance in what is believed to be the first major award recognising this sector of the travel industry.

It received the honour in the 2002 Business Traveller Awards. The magazine presents its trophies based on the findings of its annual poll of its readers, who include some of the world's most frequent flyers. It is the only travel survey conducted by a UK-based publication which is independent, authoritative and which complies with the rules laid out by the Market Research Society.

The award was presented to oneworld Managing Partner Peter Buecking at a ceremony attended by more than 400 senior travel industry executives from around the world at the London Hilton Hotel today.

He said: "Our aim has always been to establish oneworld as the winning alliance for customers, shareholders and employees. Coming on the heels of our sales successes in the past year, this award is a great vote of confidence from that most critical of audiences, in every sense of the adjective, the most frequent flyers."

Business Traveller's publisher Nick Perry said: "With the growing importance of the big, global alliances in the airline industry, we thought it was time to gauge the reaction of their most regular customers to what they have to offer."

oneworld members flew high in the airline categories of the awards, taking, more awards than members of any other global alliance.

British Airways was named Best Airline overall, along with six other awards. In the Best Business Class category, its new Club World helped it overtake Virgin Atlantic for the first time in seven years. British Airways also won the accolades for Best First Class, Best Shorthaul Airline, Best Frequent Flyer Programme, Best Cabin Staff and Most Innovative Airline.

American Airlines retained its title as Best North American Airline for the tenth year running.

oneworld is the most international of the global airline alliances, a grouping of some of the best known, highest quality names in the airline business. Besides American Airlines and British Airways, its members comprise Qantas, Cathay Pacific Airways, Iberia, LanChile, Finnair and Aer Lingus. The eight airlines are committed to working together to make global travel smoother, easier, better value and more rewarding than any individual airline can by itself. As examples of this, oneworld offers more alliance fares than all of its competitors put together and provides a wide choice of languages on its website than any of the other global groupings