This month marks the one year anniversary of Finnair joining the Siberian Joint Business (SJB).

The SJB was formed between British Airways and Japan Airlines (JAL) in October 2012 with the two airlines sharing revenue on routes between Europe and Japan. Finnair joined in April 2014 adding more routes, onward connections and contributions towards the joint revenue.

The trilateral agreement has gone from strength to strength with the three partners cross-selling 115,000 passengers last year. In fact, over 10 percent of passengers on BA services to Japan are sold by JAL and Finnair.

The agreement makes travel more flexible for customers; they now have access to combinable fares meaning they can travel out on one SJB airline and back on another. There are also new joint deals for corporate clients and travel agencies to increase choice and make it easier for them to fly on the SJB.

It is also a year since TAM Airlines and US Airways joined oneworld, in what was the biggest single day of expansion by any global airline alliance.

Between them, these two airlines:

  • Increased the number of passengers carried annually across the alliance network by a third, adding another 120 million customers a year.
  • Expanded the annual capacity offered by the alliance by 20 per cent.
  • Added almost a hundred destinations to the oneworld network – a near 10 per cent increase.

As the leading airline in Brazil, TAM Airlines has made oneworld the leading alliance in Latin America’s largest economy and the world’s third largest market for domestic air travel.

US Airways’ merger with oneworld founding member American Airlines, created the world’s largest airline on most measures – and positioned oneworld as the leading alliance in the USA, the world’s largest air travel market. It also marked the US Airways introduction to the Atlantic Joint Business (AJB) between British Airways, American Airline, Iberia and Finnair. This added 23 new routes to the AJB including nine new destinations in Europe, as well as Charlotte in the USA.  This allowed capacity across the North Atlantic to grow across by 6 cent in 2014 and saw the AJB revenue increase by 7 per cent.

Steve Ronald, Head of Alliances, said: “It has been a busy year for our airline alliances. Our partnerships are an extremely important part of our business and it is integral that we continue to work successfully with our airline partners and grow these relationships further.

“Alliances give customers greater choice and flexibility in terms of where and when they travel. Our customers travelling on our partner flights are just as important to us as those flying with us.”

In addition, today is also the 75th anniversary of the creation of BOAC, one of BA’s forerunners.