About Asia's newest airline alliance of a most surprising kind

Airline alliances are invaluable in today's scenario. Because each airline has only so many routes and a relatively lower footprint, it makes sense to team up with other airlines in order to offer a broader breadth of service to customers. Of course, we've heard of the top 3 alliances in this regard (ie, Star Alliance, SkyTeam and oneWorld). More recently, Etihad set up its own alliance involving airlines where it has financial and/or operating stakes - called Etihad Airways Partners.

But in the last couple of months, much to one’s surprise, we came to hear of a new alliance of - believe it or not - Asia Pacific based low-cost carriers! You read that right! Value Alliance is an airline alliance formed in the Apac region where several low-cost airlines operate. Here's more about Value Alliance.


Value Alliance has partners who, in total, offer 160 destinations across the Asia Pacific - that represents about a third of the world, according to them. Value Alliance's member airlines are:
  • Cebu Pacific (Philippines),
  • Jeju Air (South Korea),
  • Nok Air, NokScoot (Thailand),
  • Scoot, Tiger Air (Singapore),
  • Tiger Air Australia (Australia), and
  • Vanilla Air (Japan).


    Apparently in 2015, these airlines collectively served more than 47 million travellers with a combined fleet of 176 aircraft. Here is their route map.


    Tiger Air Singapore and Scoot currently operate to one or more destinations in India.

    While these 8 airlines use different booking engines, they are implementing Air Black Box, which will allow passengers to book across any of the airlines in the alliance, from any of their members' websites.
    Overall, this seems like a great idea to align within the Low cost space. What’s conspicuous is the absence of any Indian carriers from the list; Indigo being one of the largest low-cost airlines in the region, and that too with the kind of presence that it has in India. 

    Also missing from the list are the other Asian heavy hitters, including Lion Air (Indonesia). Also, Air Asia has a large enough footprint on its own all across Asia and probably doesn’t warrant joining an alliance at this point.

    It will be interesting to see how this pans out over the next few months. Stay tuned.


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