Royal Air Maroc announced yesterday that they are joining Oneworld. This is definitely great news for Oneworld airline’s customers for a variety of reasons. Interlined tickets will be available and you’ll get award booking reciprocity as well. You’ll be able to use, for example, AA miles to fly to Casablanca direct from NYC on Royal Air Maroc. There are good reasons to be excited for this Oneworld addition.
But you won’t be able to do this until mid-2020
And not only that, you may pay more for the pleasure than the alternative.
In this article
Let’s look at the award chart to Africa on American Airlines:
You’ll note I’ve highlighted the rates to Africa which would be 75,000 each way in Business Class. They don’t have a First Class. 40,000 would get you there one way in coach.
But, Etihad Guest miles will get you there on the same Royal Air Maroc flights for MUCH LESS.
Here’s the Etihad chart:
So 22,000 in coach or 44,000 in business vs. 40,000 in coach and 75,000 in business with AA miles once available in 2020. Almost half price!
Etihad Guest miles are available as a transfer from Citi ThankYou and from American Express Membership Rewards. So for most of you, this is already very doable. If not, and you were overly excited about the alliance, it may be time to get one of the above currencies.
To be clear, if you are building RAM into a longer Oneworld itinerary or connecting on somewhere RAM doesn’t fly, you’ll need to wait for them to join the alliance and it will be great for a purpose like that.
But until then, and for flights to Casablanca alone, Etihad Guest miles win.
I’ll also note that RAM Business Class doesn’t look spectacular. Definitely not a bucket list item for me. But that aside, you may simply be wanting to go to Casablanca and if so, this announcement still probably doesn’t affect you too much.
Do you plan to use Oneworld to fly Royal Air Maroc? Let me know here, in the comments, on Twitter, or in the private MilesTalk Facebook group.
New to all of this? My new “introduction to miles and points” book, MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points is available now.
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