Star Ends Regional Membership Schem
Jens Flottau/Athens jflottau@freenet.de
The Star Alliance will get rid of its regional membership scheme, according to sources in the alliance.
The group plans to present an updated corporate governance on the sidelines of the IATA annual general assembly in Kuala Lumpur next month and the step is expected to be formally announced there in addition to other changes.
Croatia Airlines, Blue 1 (Finland) and Adria Airways are currently the only regional members. Their status is more restricted than that of a full member. But the corporate governance changes under the "alliance of the 50s" umbrella are designed to make the decision making process within Star easier.
Among other changes, the principle of unanimous voting will no longer be applied in areas that don't affect the group as a whole, airline sources tell AviationWeek.
As a side benefit, that clears the way for smaller carriers such as Croatia, Blue 1 and Adria to become full members.
Star formally invited Greek carrier Aegean to join the alliance as a full member today. The airline is expected to finally join the largest alliance in mid-2010. Aegean will bring nine new destinations to the alliance network plus a sizeable domestic network that Star Alliance so far has not had access to. Its principle competitor, Olympic, is not yet aligned with any of the other groups. Star officials point out that Lufthansa's proposal to add Aegean was quickly adopted. Turkish Airlines, geographically the nearest member, did not object to the plans either.
Aegean has seen significant, steady and profitable growth since it launched scheduled operations in 1999 with two aircraft. The airline took over Air Greece in 2000 and merged with Cronus in 2001, turning what was once a purely domestic carrier into an international airline.
Photo credit: Star Alliance
