Jeffrey Goh -<\/strong> 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<\/strong> over the years with the changing the business model of our members<\/strong>. Traditional airlines are refocusing their activities around their core business. hub<\/strong> and on the traffic routes with the greatest potential. This meansabandonment of point-to-point destinations<\/strong> outside their hub, as well as transferring lines to specialised subsidiaries<\/strong> 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<\/strong> with the transfer of regional and domestic routes to Eurowings<\/strong>excluding its two hubs at Frankfurt<\/strong> <\/a>and Munich<\/strong><\/a>. But we are finding that our passengers are always asking for optimised connections around the world. Hence the Connecting Partners\" concept<\/strong> which we started working on a few years ago and optimised in 2018.<\/p>\n for years, airlines had to be adaptable to become Star members, now it's up to us as an alliance to be flexible<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Jeffrey Goh -<\/strong> We realised that Star Alliance<\/strong> in relation to these third-party partners<\/strong> were too restrictive. We adopted an approach pragmatic<\/strong> 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<\/strong>. For example, accepting that some partners may also be low-cost carriers...<\/p>\n What does this optimisation involve?<\/h3>\n