Customer Service
Codeshare flights between these airlines are, for the most part, seamless. This tight cooperation led to suspicions of anti-competitive behaviour, and the alliance was investigated by the European Union as a virtual merger of its members. Indeed, some speculated that if government regulations were relaxed, the members would merge into a single corporation, although no evidence has yet materialized. Prior to Star Alliance, Northwest Airlines and KLM were operating together as the forerunners of the modern airline alliance system since 1993, although there had been even earlier pairings and groupings of airlines for decades on a less formal level. The creation of Star Alliance was a milestone in airline history because of its size. It sparked the formation of rivals, notably SkyTeam and Oneworld.
The alliance developed the "Regional" concept in 2004, which helped Star Alliance penetrate individual markets with the regional participation of smaller carriers. Regional Star Alliance members had to be sponsored by an existing full Star Alliance member. However, Star Alliance has stopped designating airlines as "Regional" members and now refers to all the 25 airlines as just "members".
Star Alliance members now fly over 21,200 daily flights to 1,172 airports in 181 countries with a fleet of 4,025 aircraft. Its members carried a total of 627.52 million passengers with a turnover of US$156.8 billion, €145 billion. The alliance's market share is 28% of the global market based on revenue passenger kilometers (RPK), which is greater than the combined market share of all airlines that are not in any of the three major alliances. All Star Alliance carriers combined employ over 405,000 pilots, flight attendants, and other staff. Star Alliance was voted best airline alliance in the Skytrax 2007 World Airline Awards.
Read more about this topic: Star Alliance
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