SkyTeam celebrates 25 years as world’s second-largest airline alliance
SkyTeam, the youngest of the three major global airline alliances, celebrated its 25th anniversary on June 22, 2025.
The alliance was founded on June 22, 2000, when Delta Air Lines, Air France (which later merged with KLM, bringing it into the alliance too), Aeroméxico and Korean Air joined forces in response to some of their most direct competitors coalescing around two other major airline groupings: Star Alliance and oneworld.
SkyTeam has since been growing with the addition of new members and, as per 2024 data, it is the world’s second-largest alliance by a number of measures. As of 2025 SkyTeam has 18 members and a global airline market share of close to 14%, only surpassed on both counts by Star Alliance.
The combined SkyTeam network spans almost 1,000 destinations worldwide, including the world’s northernmost and southernmost commercial airports, Longyearbyen (LYR), in Norway’s Svalbard’s archipelago, and Ushuaia (USH), in Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego respectively.
The latest airlines to join SkyTeam are Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), which switched from Star Alliance in September 2024 after Air France-KLM became one of its main shareholders, and UK-based long-haul carried Virgin Atlantic in 2023.
However, the alliance has also lost some of its members over the last three years. ITA Airways is in the process of switching to Star Alliance after its acquisition by Lufthansa Group, and Czech carrier CSA has ceased operations after being absorbed by its parent company. Russian flag carrier Aeroflot, which joined SkyTeam in 2007, had its membership suspended following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In an exclusive interview with AeroTime, published in December 2024, SkyTeam’s CEO Patrick Roux highlighted the role the alliance played in providing an enhanced passenger experience across its network. These include common initiatives such as Priority Pass, the opening of new SkyTeam branded lounges at airports where SkyTeam has no home carrier, and promoting sustainability initiatives like ‘The Aviation Challenge’, in which SkyTeam’s members compete to devise sustainability-enhancing projects.
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SkyTeam, the youngest of the three major global airline alliances, celebrated its 25th anniversary on June 22, 2025. …
The post SkyTeam celebrates 25 years as world’s second-largest airline alliance appeared first on AeroTime.
