New oneworld members: Malaysia Airlines and Flybe Finland

Here’s some oneworld Alliance news to start out the week:

Malaysia Airlines

Malaysia Airlines was set to join the oneworld alliance last year but had to postpone their entry in order to address some financial issues. I guess that most of it must be behind them by now because they just announced that they’ll be joining early next year:

Malaysia Airlines will become a full member of oneworld with effect from Friday 1 February 2013, adding one of commercial aviation’s most frequent award winners to the world’s leading quality airline alliance.

Malaysia Airlines offers service between Kuala Lumpur and Los Angeles with a stop in Tokyo. Go here for complete details.

Flybe Finland

The recession in Europe has presented some challenges to oneworld member Finnair. In order to cut some fo their cost they recently transfered service on some of their routes to Flybe Finland. Flybe Finland is a subsidary of Flybe, the airline that operates some codeshare regional flights for British Airways, KLM, and Air France.

Flybe Finland is to fly as an affiliate member of oneworld, the leading quality global airline alliance, on routes it operates on behalf of alliance member Finnair.

The arrangement takes effect from Sunday (28 October), when Finnair is transferring its 12 Embraer 190 regional jets to Flybe Finland to operate on behalf of Finnair on select routes at select times, to destinations in Europe including Budapest, Manchester, Munich and Warsaw.

Flybe Finland already operates a number of domestic and Baltic routes on behalf of Finnair, including between its Helsinki hub and Joensuu, Ivalo, Kittilä, Kuopio, Kuusamo, Rovaniemi, Oulu, Tallinn, Tampere, Turku and Vaasa.

All these flights carry the regular Finnair AY flight code, with products and services to match those offered on regular Finnair flights. Pilots will be from Finnair and Flybe while flight attendants will be employed by Flybe only, and wear the Flybe uniform. Other than that, customers should not notice any difference from regular Finnair services.

The transfer of these operations has been made as part of Finnair’s overall restructuring plans to return the group to profitability.

Go here for complete details.

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