oneworld CEO on the alliance’s premium focus and strategic vision 

There are three major airline alliances in the world – Star Alliance, SkyTeam and oneworld – which together account for nearly half of all global air traffic. 

In previous Executive Spotlight articles, AeroTime has explored the strategies of Star Alliance and SkyTeam. This year’s World Aviation Festival in Lisbon, Portugal, which took place from October 7 to 9, 2025, provided the perfect opportunity to complete our trilogy by sitting down for an in-depth conversation with the CEO of oneworld , Nathaniel Pieper. 

Pieper is an industry veteran who previously held senior roles at Northwest Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines before taking up the top post at oneworld.  

However, his tenure at the helm of the alliance will have been relatively short as a few days after we conducted this interview, American Airlines (one of oneworld’s founding members) announced that Pieper had been selected to take on the role of its Chief Commercial Officer, effective November 3, 2025. 

Before Pieper transitions to this new responsibility, AeroTime had the chance to discuss oneworld’s strategic positioning, explore what sets oneworld apart from its competitors, and the role of airline alliances should be in the highly competitive air travel market. 

oneworld, which Pieper has steered since April 2024, was founded in 1999 by American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, and Canadian Airlines (the assets of which were later acquired by Air Canada).  

The alliance has since steadily expanded its membership to reach 15 member airlines. This makes oneworld the smallest, by membership and passenger numbers, of the big three. 

Sheer quantity, however, may not be the most relevant metric when it comes to airlines.  

So, what is it that sets oneworld apart from its larger peers? 

oneworld’s premium focus 

“If you think about why alliances started, it was network coverage,” Pieper explained. “Our guests want to fly places that we can’t get to. Loyalty is the second thing. It’s why they exist. All of us [the three major alliances] cover 95-96% of global demand. So, network coverage is pretty similar.” 

“From a oneworld perspective, our focus is on the premium market,” Pieper said, explaining oneworld’s unique positioning. “If you look at the roster, we have the fewest number of airlines, but I wouldn’t trade our roster of airlines with either of the other two alliances. With Qantas in Oceania, Qatar Airways in the Middle East, Cathay and JAL [Japan Airlines – ed. note] in the Pacific, British Airways and IAG in Europe and being the only alliance that has two members in the United States, Alaska and American, I think our suite is quite strong, and we have some industry-leading brands in there.”  

Pieper further elaborated on oneworld’s premium focus by referring to the alliance’s three loyalty tiers (Emerald, Sapphire, and Ruby) and how they compare to those offered by its peers. The executive highlighted the fact that oneworld Emerald is the only premium tier to provide first class lounge access to any Emerald traveler across the alliance’s entire network, even those not flying on a first class ticket. 

“That’s a unique benefit and one that we know resonates strongly with our top-tier guests,” he said. “So, I feel really good about where we’re positioned in that premium space.” 

But has oneworld deliberately chosen to remain smaller than its counterparts? And what criteria are used to determine membership? 

“When adding new members, one of the things we are focused on is how much a prospective new member would overlap with our existing ones,” Pieper said. “I look at the other two alliances, and there’s a lot more network overlap than we have. I think we make a conscious effort.”  

“The idea is to be stronger together and to be able to cover more of the world, provide better guest access and so on,” he continued. “The other tenet is that we want oneworld partners to prioritize cooperating with each other, and the more overlap you have, the more competitive it becomes, and you end up butting heads against each other. It’s really hard to then foster a sense of camaraderie.” 

Adding new members and regions 

However, Pieper also emphasized that being restrictive does not mean implementing a numerus clausus policy. In fact, oneworld has welcomed two new members in 2025: Fiji Airways and Oman Air. What do each of them bring to oneworld? 

“It’s been a big year for us,” Pieper said. “Let’s start with Fiji. They joined at the end of March. They have great brand loyalty in their section of the world, the South Pacific. So, it gives us good synergies there. Also, Fiji is the epitome of the dream holiday. We all aspire to it. And we now have the chance to use “loyalty currency” there. Let’s say, if I’m flying all over the world. I’m going to have a credit card to generate all those [loyalty] points and then be able to take that dream vacation. And I think Fiji is one of those places, together with Bora Bora, which seem to be what’s on the credit card advertisements.”  

Pieper also noted that Fiji Airways has already been using American Airlines’ AAdvantage as its own loyalty program. 

“And then we have Oman Air, which joined at the end of June, a terrific airline from a country with great aspirations in terms of growing awareness as a destination,” he added. “From a strategic perspective, it gives us three key players in the Middle East: Qatar Airways, Royal Jordanian and now Oman Air. There is amazing growth in that region. So, it really gives us a stronghold, and an exciting one for us.”  

Pieper also highlighted how these two new members have little overlap with previously existing members. 

“This kind of reinforces my earlier point,” he said “What is the amount of overlap with those two? Not much at all. And that’s part of our calculus, and maybe that’s what has driven in having fewer members.”  

Are there any regions in which Pieper thinks oneworld has scope to grow? 

“There are a couple of markets where we don’t have a home member today. The first one is India. As you know, IATA’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) [the main annual gathering of the International Air Transport Association – ed. note] was in India in June [2025], and we would love to have a carrier in India join oneworld, and maybe that happens someday,” he said. “We have now 10 members that serve different spots in India. Some actually serve more, like Qatar Airways, whose network in India is amazing, but with 10 airlines flying there, there are a lot of things you can do together as a group. Maybe it’s airport handling, maybe it’s co-location.”  

“One of the things we’re focusing a lot of time on is lounges. Can we open oneworld lounges in India? The Indian airport situation with lounge space is tricky,” Pieper explained. “They currently just have one big lounge for every airline. So, we’re trying to work with local authorities so that they give us a oneworld space, because it’s an easy way for one world carriers to work together and offer our premium product to our guests and really raise awareness in a market where we don’t have a home carrier.” 

Latin America is the other market that oneworld has set its sights on. The alliance used to have a member in that region, LATAM, but the carrier left oneworld in 2020 after SkyTeam member Delta Air Lines acquired a 20% equity stake in the airline. 

“It’s a region of the world where we have a lot of members flying. It’s very important that American Airlines and Iberia have an extensive network in Latin America as well,” Pieper said. “So, again, if a home carrier in that market wanted to join oneworld, and we thought it made economic sense, and that it would be beneficial and really constructive for us, we would be open to that. And we’re always studying and looking at that. But then in the meantime, similar to India, are there ways we can work together to really coordinate with two, three, four or five of our members that serve Latin America to be more effective and really raise oneworld’s profile there?”  

Opening oneworld-branded lounges 

Pieper also mentioned how, much like in the case of India, shared lounges are one of the service elements that an alliance can use to deliver value to its member airlines and, ultimately, to passengers. 

“We opened two of them last year, Amsterdam (AMS) and Seoul (ICN). Not surprisingly, neither of those two airports are hubs for oneworld member airlines. They’ve been open for 18 months, maybe a little more, and the net promoter scores and the customer feedback we’re getting have been amazing,” he said. “We’ve got some very exciting news about one of those lounges coming soon, and it’s a good piece of feedback for us that we are on the right track.” 

“Guests really appreciate it, and our members love it because, from a cost perspective, it’s just so much more efficient to have a joint facility than for one of them to be a leaseholder,” he continued. “oneworld takes care of the administrative stuff and makes it accessible for anyone travelling on a on a oneworld airline, whether on a business class ticket or because of the loyalty tiers in case of people that have certain status.” 

The experience has been so successful that Pieper is already thinking about scaling up. 

“I would love to open another three, five, seven or 10 lounges in the next five years. It’s such an easy, logical way in a non-home market to be able to really put your forces together,” he said. “It raises oneworld’s profile, there’s good cost efficiency and most importantly, amazing guest efficiency in what we can deliver.” 

Aiming to deliver a seamless experience 

What other areas of the passenger experience can benefit from the economies of scale offered by a major alliance?  

Pieper said one of the main challenges for an alliance is seamlessness of service, so that passengers can utilize the advantages of the network, while at the same time making it feel as though they are being served by a single airline. 

Technology obviously plays a major role in this quest towards seamlessness. 

“I want the technology framework so that whatever oneworld carrier app I want to use, I can use it even if I’m not flying that airline. Maybe I just like that app the best? Every step of the way, from the time you actually need to go somewhere. How do I do that? Where can I buy my ticket? How do I book it? Do I get lounge access? How do I check my bag? All the way through the connecting experience. Did my bag show up? Is there a bag tracking on the app? Did my miles get credited efficiently? What we want to deliver is that experience as if it’s all offered by one, even if you flew on two or three carriers.”  

In this regard, Pieper explained that oneworld is in the latter stages of establishing a common digital platform where all 15 members will collaborate to store guest information about the journey and experience in a central location. 

 “The first step of that will be with everybody issuing connecting boarding passes across any member airline for connecting travelers. And eventually, once the common platform is offered, we’re going to evolve it into bag tracking and other things that you would expect. This is in the early stages. I’d say it will be 80% complete by the end of the year, maybe spilling into the first part of next year. We’ll have every member linked.” 

Pieper offered a personal example to illustrate his vision about what an alliance like oneworld should be doing on the technological front.  

“I think about my dad, who is 84, and also about my 24-year-old daughter, and the way I explain it to our folks and to other people, is the travel experiences of my 84 -year-old father and my 24-year-old daughter could not be more different.  

“My father wants to check in at the airport three hours in advance. He wants to wait in line, talk to a human, have a boarding pass, print it, and put it in his hand. He wants to see that bag get checked and tagged and off it goes. And he wants the personal touch.  

“My daughter doesn’t want to talk to a human at all,” he continued. “All she wants to do is look at her phone and be like, ‘great! I checked in 24 hours in advance. Here’s all the information I need. I don’t want to talk to anybody’.” 

“Those are two really different experiences. But the thing is, for us to be successful, we’ve got to be able to deliver both of them,” he added. “And technology is the key, because unfortunately, my 84-year-old father’s experience probably is going to age out, and my 24-year-old daughter’s experience is going to become even more commonplace. That’s why technology over cellphone becomes really critical.”  

So, what other common products and services does oneworld offer? 

“We have a Round-the-World program as well, and a specific initiative that focuses on the Pacific region,” Pieper explained, alluding to a product that makes it possible to purchase a journey around the planet by combining segments flown by the different airline members. This is also a product that oneworld’s competitor, Star Alliance, has offered for a number of years.  

“Our focus on these projects took a step backwards during the pandemic, and frankly, we’re working to figure out the best way to deliver this,” he added. “There’s a good amount of demand for Round the World activities and Round the World tickets.   

Pieper went on to underline the importance of having the right distribution channels for this type of iconic product.  

“Historically, these have been distributed on the oneworld website, which certainly has nowhere near the commercial power that our member airlines have on their own sites,” he explained. “So, we’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to distribute that product and that’s actually on our initiative list for 2026: to find an effective way to sell it.  

“So, we want to make sure that all of those things are lined up because, right now, on the oneworld side, it’s possible to plan and book flights which are ticketed through our member airlines.” 

Governance and the internal dynamics of the alliance 

How does oneworld work internally? Pieper referred again to oneworld’s relatively small size as an advantage. 

“We try to run the alliance as best we can, to achieve consensus on major things. We’ve never had a vote, for example, at CEO level about a contentious issue. We’ve been able to reach consensus,” he explained. “And I think that’s something that’s important for harmony, for collaboration. We want you to prioritize working with each other first. It’s important to have that sense of harmony.” 

Pieper also outlined how governance is structured at oneworld.  

“Let’s start just kind of at the top. In our governance structure, I have 15 bosses, which are the CEOs of each of the member airlines, and there is a chairman of the governing board, Robert Isom, the CEO of American Airlines. That rotates. It’s a two-year term. We meet with that group twice a year, once at IATA [AGM] and a second time, which is always in December.” 

“Below that we have what’s called an alliance management board, which, in translation, is the alliance leaders at each of our 15 member airlines. And that group meets quarterly, and that group along with us, is responsible, really, for setting the strategy of the Alliance key priorities. And I’d say the third piece of this system is my organization, which we call OMC, the oneworld Management Company.” 

At this point, Pieper provided some interesting insights into how the relationship between an alliance as a whole and its individual members can be fraught with challenges. 

“When I came to the alliance, the oneworld management team wasn’t as strong as we wanted it to be,” he revealed “We needed to make oneworld’s management team strong enough so that they could work on an even level with the member airlines, jointly figure out priorities, and who’s responsible for what and why that’s important.  

“We needed the oneworld team to be an equal partner and to have top-notch people so that we could have parity and really good strategic discussions.”  

Pieper also highlighted how the core function of the alliance is to deliver value to its member airlines. 

“My 15 bosses look to me and say, ‘Okay, you have a unique perspective, you can see across all 15 airlines’,” he added. 

Pieper spends a considerable amount of his time on the road (or, more accurately, in the air) not only meeting CEOs in person (his “15 bosses” as he likes to refer to them), but also top strategic leaders and other key people in each of the airlines. This way the alliance can act as a conduit for ideas and best practices across its members. 

“That’s how we can go deliver value, and then work hand in hand with the alliance leaders to say, ‘Do you agree? Yes, no?’ and focus it that way. That way we end up with a really good, strong, endorsed strategy for the alliance. This is how we can deliver the most amount of value.” 

The result is an annual strategic plan which is presented to the member airline CEOs at the annual December meeting. This is when budgeting and priorities are decided. 

When it comes to governance, a particularly hot topic in the world of alliances is how to handle out-of-alliance partnerships. 

“Let’s start at the beginning: what makes me happiest is to see our 15 members financially healthy and successful. We want them to be the best operators and the best airlines that they can be, and I think they would too. Being part of oneworld and working together amongst the 15 airlines is a huge component of that,” he said before outlining oneworld’s policy in this regard. 

“We want our 15 members to prioritize cooperation with each other first and foremost. If we’ve got a member that is in its home market, and you are a oneworld member, and that’s not your home market, but you want to fly there, we want you to work with that one world member in the home market,” he said. “However, there are areas like we talked about earlier, where oneworld doesn’t have a home market airline.  

“If that’s the case, if there are strategic gaps that none of our members can provide, you need to be able to go work with someone, even if they’re outside of our alliance, even if they’re in a different alliance. If that’s what you think is what will deliver you the best amount of value, then you are free to do that.”  

Pieper stated his belief that oneworld is the most permissive of the three major alliances when it comes to establishing partnerships with non-members. If one of the member airlines was to overstep on this particular front, there is a compliance mechanism within oneworld. Although Pieper noted, it has never been implemented.  

“We have never had to bring anything to a vote. We’ve always been able to reach consensus agreements. When there have been challenges, we’ve always been able to work something out at the consensus level,” he said “We have rules, just like each of the other global alliances do, but we’ve never had to say, ‘Okay, we’re going to have a very contentious vote on the process’. We’ve always been able to work it out.” 

Where does oneworld stand when it comes to sustainability?  

Just a few days prior to this interview oneworld announced a partnership with Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in clean energy and backed by Bill Gates, to launch a US$150 million fund to accelerate Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) projects. Five oneworld members (Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, IAG, Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines) are direct investors in the fund, which, interestingly also counts the participation of Star Alliance member, Singapore Airlines. 

Pieper explained how this initiative was the result of member airlines all having a common problem in the scarcity of SAF supply. 

“One of the reasons that alliance airlines join alliances is to be able to aggressively attack what I like to think of as initiatives of scale: things that you can do much more efficiently and successfully with your friends than you can on your own, and sustainability is the perfect example of that.” 

“Our sustainability experts said, ‘We all have this common problem. None of us have the bandwidth to be able to go research emerging technologies in the SAF space all over the world. Can we find a partner that we can go work with?’ So, we identified Breakthrough Energy Ventures as an ideal partner for this and then facilitated the discussions with the leaders of each of the member airlines,” he added. “It was too good an opportunity. So, we negotiated, obviously, and finally, got that across the line. We are very excited about it.” 

Pieper thinks that not only will more oneworld airlines join this initiative in the near future, but other players across the value chain, such as aircraft and engine manufacturers, might do so, even if they are not alliance members. 

“I think each of our member airlines share concerns that there are not going to be available quantities of SAF produced at economic prices that make sense to achieve net zero targets,” he explained. “Sitting and waiting and hoping that that happens is not a strategy that our CEOs were comfortable with, and neither was the oneworld team. That’s what spawned creative ideas like this Breakthrough Energy Ventures approach and knowing that we may need to be more creative, more proactive, and really try to ignite some of the developments, some of the investments, some of the creativity that is going to be required to do that.”  

What are the next big milestones for oneworld? 

“I think the one thing I’d like to highlight again is that our job as oneworld is to deliver as much value to our member airlines as we can,” Pieper said. “For 26 years, oneworld has been doing this. It started as a network and a loyalty business, and that was really where all the value could be delivered at that time, and it has evolved, because we all kind of have global coverage now. So, now it’s about the customer experience, and also other areas that require creativity, like sustainability.”  

In this regard, Pieper referred to an innovation summit hosted by oneworld in Lisbon the day before the opening of the 2025 World Aviation Festival. 

“That came from us thinking about much of the innovation that’s out there, whether it’s SAF, or whether it’s aircraft technology,” he said. “Tom O’Leary of JetZero [a US startup developing a blended wing body airliner – ed. note] was there, Azeem [Barodawala] of Volantio [a startup that helps airlines optimize revenue by repurchasing and then reselling tickets in response to supply and demand signals – ed. note], was presenting as well. We even had a presentation on Seagliders [ground-in-wing vehicles capable of flying at high speeds just a few meters over the surface of the sea – ed. note]. That was fascinating!”  

Pieper further elaborated on the genesis of this project and its rationale within the oneworld strategic context.  

“What we started thinking about was that there are six, seven or eight amazing innovative technology venture capital arms within our member airlines that are doing pretty neat things. Alaska is at the forefront with its venture arm. IAG has had one; Cathay Pacific was the first airline to invest in an SAF provider. Japan Airlines has made amazing investments in a bunch of things. 

“The point is that we looked at all of this, and we thought, ‘we should actually get this group together because each of them has set their venture arms a little bit differently’. All have creative ideas, but the motivation is kind of the same at the base.”  

“I was incredibly skeptical from the beginning,” admitted Pieper. “I remember when Matt Ridley, our director of sustainability and innovation, pitched this to me six months ago, I thought, ‘Okay, six people are going to show up for this thing. Are you sure?’ And it was like, ‘No, we should do it the day before the world aviation festival. Everybody will be there. It’ll work’. So, it came to fruition. We had 80 or 90 people there, incredible leaders. I left with so many more questions than answers.” 

Pieper explained that he sees projects like the innovation summit as a way of adding value to oneworld member airlines in a completely new and creative way. He stated that while it may still be premature to make it an annual event, he would not rule it out, given all the positive feedback that came from it. 

Pieper concluded our chat by pointing at the future of oneworld and reiterating the alliance’s commitment to delivering value rather than just continuing to add members. 

“I can’t see oneworld ever having 30 members,” he said. “We clearly need to continue to evolve and find a way to add value to our members, and this is a great way to do it.”  The post oneworld CEO on the alliance’s premium focus and strategic vision  appeared first on AeroTime.

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