'My job is to make oneworld feel like one airline globally'

Enrique Perrella finds out how oneworld CEO Nat Pieper facilitates interaction and growth between the alliance's member airlines

- By Enrique Perrella

WHEN NAT PIEPER stepped into the role of oneworld CEO in 2024, he did so with one clear goal: to steer the world's smallest global airline alliance into a bold new era defined by premium service, digital sophistication and collaborative scale. Now, over a year into the role, Pieper is reshaping how the alliance's 15 member airlines work together to offer travellers a seamless, elevated experience across both continents and time zones.

"My first 60 days were a sprint," Pieper told Business Traveller in Delhi during the IATA AGM 2025, where oneworld's governing board of airline CEOs was set to convene and lay the groundwork for the upcoming year. "When we met in Dubai last year, I had to present to the CEOs of our 13 members. That was the moment to define our priorities, and I'm happy to say my badge still worked the next week, so I took that as a good sign." From that first meeting, Pieper quickly identified three strategic imperatives that now anchor the alliance's transformation: customer experience, digital integration and initiatives of scale.

"We are focusing on delivering a consistent, premium experience for travellers across all our member airlines," says the former airline executive, who has amassed more than two decades of experience in airline management.

Pieper wants passengers - especially the alliance's most loyal - to feel as if they're flying with a single, global airline, regardless of which oneworld carrier they're on. To get there, he reorganised the alliance's structure to reflect how a modern airline operates. he says. The outcome was a new vertical structure led by seasoned industry veterans across customer experience, digital, communications and marketing, and corporate services such as finance, HR and legal.