It has been speculated over the past week that Royal Air Maroc, the airline of Morocco, is joining the Oneworld alliance. Today the airline formally announced in a press conference that they would join Oneworld by mid-2020. They will be the first full member airline to join the alliance over the past six years. The last full member airline to join in 2012 was Qatar Airways. Fiji Airlines technically joined the alliance in June 2018, but they joined as a connect member, which does not include full reciprocal benefits.
| Oneworld Airlines | |||
| American Airlines | British Airways | Cathay Pacific | Finnair |
| Iberia | Japan Airlines | LATAM | Malaysia Airlines |
| Qantas | Qatar Airways | Royal Jordanian | S7 Airlines |
| Sri Lankan Airlines | Royal Air Maroc | ||
Oneworld is the smallest of the three airline alliances with only 14 airlines. Star Alliance comes in with 27 members and SkyTeam has 20 airline members. As a full-fledged member all 13 other airlines will gain access to earn and redeem miles on all Royal Air Maroc flights as well as on Royal Air Maroc Express flights. Royal Air Maroc Express will join oneworld as an affiliate member.
Route Network
Royal Air Maroc has a large presence of flights from Morocco to Western Africa and Europe. They currently offer non-stop flights from Casablanca (CMN) to New York (JFK), Washington, DC (IAD), and Montreal (YUL). They previously had announced that they are starting flights to Miami (MIA) in April 2019 and Boston (BOS) in July 2019. Check out the current route network below.
On-Board Product
The Royal Air Maroc North American routes are exclusively operated by the 787 aircraft which are set up in a 2-2-2 business class and a 3-3-3 set up in economy.
| Cabin | Width | Pitch |
| Business Class | 21″ | 70″ |
| Economy | 17″ | 30-32″ |
The 787’s are densely configured with only 18 business class seats and 256 economy seats. The business class seats are unique in that one seat sits higher than the other paired seats when reclined into bed mode, as shown above. Older 767’s in their fleet are worth avoiding if possible. Royal Air Maroc does have a short-haul fleet of 737’s which are set up with a real domestic first class product, instead of the awful blocked middle seat European domestic first class that you typically find in the area. Sam had the chance to fly on board one of their last remaining 747’s back in 2016. You can read his full trip review here.
I can’t wait to be able to redeem my miles to head to Morocco as it is one of my favorite destinations. It’s great to see Oneworld fill a hole in their alliance network. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Royal Air Maroc expand to cover destinations all over Africa as hopefully this partnership proves fruitful.
