Press Releases (American Region)

JAL Decides to Seek oneworld Membership
Tokyo - October 25, 2005: Japan Airlines (JAL), Asia's largest airline group, has decided to apply to join the multilateral airline alliance, oneworld. Launched in February 1999, oneworld offers a global network provided by eight major airlines in the world, namely American Airlines, British Airways, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Iberia, LAN, Finnair and Aer Lingus, plus their 12 affiliates.*

The decision to join the multilateral alliance is in line with JAL's corporate policy to always think and act from the customers' point of view. Up to now, JAL has followed a bilateral alliance policy but has always kept an eye on the activities of multilateral alliances and has decided that now is the time for it to participate in such a grouping. Ever since oneworld was founded, its member airlines have worked together to provide passengers with top class travel offering the highest levels of convenience, comfort and value through expanded and improved products and services that can be enjoyed anywhere in the world.

As JAL and oneworld share the same purpose and objective, obtaining oneworld membership, while maintaining present bilateral agreements, would be in the best interests of JAL's plans to further develop the JAL Group, and represents the airline's strong commitment to providing the very best to its customers. The oneworld alliance greatly assists international passengers with their travels through the integration of e-ticketing, easier access to a more extensive network and linked services such as frequent flyer mileage programs, mutual use of airport lounges, and smooth flight connections.

Presently, oneworld has a network linking around 600 cities in 135 countries, and by joining the alliance JAL's network would further expand. The oneworld alliance is the first multilateral alliance in the world with interline e-ticketing in place between all of its members, making it far more convenient for passengers to transfer between flights of different member airlines. By joining an alliance that pursues such leading-edge services as this, JAL feels that its customers' convenience would be further improved.

With a worldwide network which serves 206 airports in 34 countries and territories, and strong market presence particularly in Japan and Asia, JAL believes it would be able to significantly enhance the competitiveness of oneworld when it finally becomes a member of the alliance.

From now JAL will be meeting with oneworld for detailed discussions.

*Royal Jordanian has been elected on board with effect from the turn of 2006/2007, and Malev Hungarian Airlines has signed a memorandum of understanding as its first step to joining.
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