Russian domestic airline, S7 Airlines, is to join global airline alliance, oneworld. The carrier was unanimously elected on board by the grouping’s existing ten member airlines and will become part of oneworld, offering the alliance’s full range of services, benefits and fares, during 2010.

As a first step, its network will be added from 1 June to the Global Explorer round-the-world fare offered by all oneworld member airlines and selected carriers that are not part of the alliance.

British Airways will support S7 through its 18-month alliance implementation programme, as its oneworld sponsor.

S7 serves 72 destinations worldwide – 38 of them in Russia. It will add 54 cities to the oneworld map – 35 of them in Russia. It will bring eight countries onto the alliance’s network – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

This will expand oneworld’s network to nearly 750 destinations in almost 150 countries, served by a combined fleet of 2,300 aircraft operating almost 8,500 flights a day, carrying more than 330 million passengers a year.

S7 – majority privately owned – is Russia’s second biggest carrier and the first carrier in the country to convert to an all Western-built Airbus and Boeing fleet which includes 26 Airbus A320 family types, seven Airbus A310 and two Boeing 767s, with an average fleet age of nine years.

The carrier was also the first Russian airline to adopt full electronic ticketing and on-line reservations and sales. It holds the internationally recognised IOSA (International Air Transport Association Operational Safety Audit) certification, renewed in October 2008.