Selma Roth Saudi Gazette JEDDAH – Nearly two years after Saudi Airlines joined the SkyTeam alliance, SkyTeam CEO Michael Wisbrun revealed the achievements and future plans of his alliance during a press conference here on Wednesday. “We will add as last member next month, on March 5th, Garuda Indonesia,” Wisbrun said, bringing the alliance memberships to 20 airlines. He said this airline has a major market of “up to 200 million people” that is also “very much attached to Saudi Arabia. “If you look at the red threats (of developments in the airlines industry) you recognize that airlines are getting bigger and bigger. They are integrating and consolidating,” Wisbrun said, pointing to the recent merge between American Airlines and US Airways. This “clustering of airlines” is happening on all continents, Wisbrun continued, but not between continents, as intercontinental merges are not allowed by law. As a result, airlines cooperate with each other through alliances “to come as close as possible to the benefits of a total merger, namely the advantages of the scale, the advantages of cost-efficiency, and the advantages towards the customers,” the CEO said. The SkyTeam is currently the second biggest alliance, but will lose several airlines later this year due to mergers and airlines opting for other alliances. However, according to Wisbrun this is not necessarily something bad. “It's not about the numbers only; it's about the relevant presence in the world.” Currently, the SkyTeam covers 95 percent of the flows in the world, Wisbrun stated, adding that “we won't focus on going to more members, but we want to work more closely together within the memberships we have. “We do realize that we have to create value for the members we have, and that is, I would say, our targets for the coming two, three years,” Wisbrun said. It, however, remains to be seen how the SkyTeam is going to add value for its customers, with some of its services only being available to so-called “elite and elite-plus members.” “The (SkyTeam lounges at airports) are available for those customers (...) that are qualifying for that segment of frequent flyer,” Wisbrun admitted, adding that their “surveys indicate that we don't have many of those lounges, but where we have the lounges they are highly appreciated.” Concerning the SkyTeam plans and experiments to cluster drop-off luggage points and cut on manpower, the CEO said “the easiest way of traveling is without luggage, but if you have luggage you see situations where you have a lot of lines. With the drop-off experiments we are now implementing in London we exactly try to prevent (long queues and chaos). Sometimes it's chaos, but we like to introduce a little bit less chaos and, if possible, to make it a fluent process,” saying that at the end of the day, the process should be more efficient for the customer, for the airline, as well as for the airport.
