Is a Oneworld lounge coming to Delhi?

After opening its own-branded lounges in Seoul and Amsterdam at the start of 2024, all’s been quiet on the Oneworld lounge front.

That’s set to change, with the airline alliance plotting as many as ten airport lounges within the next five years.

As is the case at Incheon and Schiphol, these will be located at airports to which many Oneworld member airlines fly, but none has their own lounge.

“Each of the member airlines has been incredibly pleased with the quality of service and the feedback that they’re getting from their passengers” at these Oneworld lounges, then-alliance CEO Nat Pieper told Executive Traveller at a press event to mark the occasion of Oman Air joining the Oneworld family in June 2025.

The Oneworld Lounge at Seoul's Incheon Airport.

“We’re on to something here,” he enthused – although he then allowed that the third Oneworld lounge could open “anytime within the next 6 to 12 months. We're working it hard.”

Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport is likely on the shortlist of desired locations, as the alliance looks to shore up its presence in the booming sub-continent.

India has been a persistent hole in the Oneworld network since prospective member Kingfisher Airlines collapsed in 2012.

“India is a market that we collectively have interest in finding somebody,” Pieper remarked at an airline industry event in New York in late 2025.

Prospective Oneworld member Kingfisher Airlines, owned by Indian entrepreneur Vijay Mallya, collapsed in 2012.

However, there are really only two suitable players in the market: Air India, which belongs to the rival Star Alliance group, and the unaligned IndiGo, which is the nation’s largest airline, with a 65.2% domestic market share.

IndiGo is in the process of transitioning from a low-cost airline to a mid-market ‘hybrid’ carrier with business class cabins, long-range international routes and a rebooted frequent flyer program.

But adding a new member is “always tricky”, Pieper added, because it has to be a good fit with the group’s 15 other airlines.

And as he told Executive Traveller in June 2025: “while I would never say never in terms of not adding another, I think our primary focus is to deepen the commitment and the cooperation that our member airlines generate and produce with each other.”

It’s not as if Oneworld lacks reach. “Bringing Oman Air into the Oneworld fold gives us 95% coverage of global demand… so let's see if we can cover the other additional spots of demand through cooperation with existing members.”

Oneworld's Amsterdam lounge shares the same funky design as its Seoul sibling.

One plank in that strategy could be to open a dedicated Oneworld lounge at Delhi.

“We have 10 members that actually serve in India and so it is a super important market, growing like crazy.”

Among that line-up of American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Oman Air, Qantas, Qatar Airways and SriLankan Airlines, none has its own lounge.

One challenge, Pieper said, is that Indian airports prefer to run their own common-use lounges which are available to eligible passenger on all airlines.

Since then, of course, Pieper left Oneworld to become Chief Operating Officer at American Airlines, with former Finnair Chief Commercial Officer Ole Orvér taking over as Oneworld CEO on April 1, 2026.

It remains to be seen if Oneworld has made any changes to its long-held ambition to open a netwok of its own lounges, along the same lines as rivals Star Alliance and SkyTeam.

Also read: Hawaiian Airlines will join Oneworld on April 22