Interview with Jeffrey Goh, President of Star Alliance

What is the strategy behind the integration of Connecting Partners into Star Alliance?

Jeffrey Goh - Star Alliance's strategy has always been to offer our passengers the best possible network of destinations to give them an unrivalled global offer. Except that this strategy has had to adapt over the years with the changing the business model of our members. Traditional airlines are refocusing their activities around their core business. hub and on the traffic routes with the greatest potential. This meansabandonment of point-to-point destinations outside their hub, as well as transferring lines to specialised subsidiaries in this point-to-point traffic. This is what has just happened, for example, with South African Airways, which has stopped operating its own domestic routes, with the exception of Johannesburg-Cape Town and Johannesburg-Durban. Or what has happened with Lufthansa with the transfer of regional and domestic routes to Eurowingsexcluding its two hubs at Frankfurt and Munich. But we are finding that our passengers are always asking for optimised connections around the world. Hence the Connecting Partners" concept which we started working on a few years ago and optimised in 2018.

for years, airlines had to be adaptable to become Star members, now it's up to us as an alliance to be flexible

What does this optimisation involve?

Jeffrey Goh - We realised that Star Alliance in relation to these third-party partners were too restrictive. We adopted an approach pragmatic lowering our catalogue of requirements for our future "Connecting Partners", probably reducing them from around sixty to just twenty points. The most important thing for us is to continue to offer our customers a simplified journey without any loss of network. While for years airlines have had to be adaptable in order to become members of Star Alliance, today it is up to us as an alliance to be flexible. For example, accepting that some partners may also be low-cost carriers...

There are currently only two Connecting Partners companies, Juneyao and Thai Smile. Could Eurowings be next on the list?

Jeffrey Goh - I cannot comment on the negotiations underway with other airlines. But of course, Eurowings is one of our objectives because its integration would enable us to close the gaps in our coverage in Germany and Europe.

What role can Star Alliance play in the difficult economic climate that airlines are experiencing, with the COV-19 coronavirus ?

Jeffrey Goh - In these difficult times, we are showing solidarity to try to maximise income by looking at where we can act together to reduce operating costs. We are going to allocate part of the alliance's budget to joint marketing initiatives to get our business back on track once the crisis is over. We are, of course, leaving it up to the member airlines to identify their needs, while for our part we are trying to optimise our business models. With the falling trafficFor example, we can help to find the necessary network synergies by improving connections from one partner to another in the event that an airline decides to temporarily withdraw from a market. We are also counting on governments in the affected countries to help the airline industry. Some countries, such as Singapore but also Hong Kong have already announced aid measures to support their air transport activities.