I wanted to take a step back and write a basic level post, as it seems from some comments in the thread that there are some people who aren't familiar with how the alliances work.
There are three main alliances, each of which are a group of airlines that are
partners, having made agreements to allow frequent flier members from other alliance members to (1) collect miles in their own frequent flier program by flying a partner airline within their alliance, and (2) to use miles collected in their frequent flier program to book award travel on a partner within their alliance.
To give an example of each, for (1) if you flew Air France anywhere in the world, you could credit the mileage to your Delta or Aeromexico or Alitalia account (or that of any other Skyteam Member). For (2), if you had miles on Delta, you could use it to book on Aeroflot or China Southern or any other Skyteam member (there are some limitations, discussed below). But basically, this holds true among each of the three major airline alliances, SkyTeam, Star Alliance and OneWorld.
The three major alliances are as follows:
SKYTEAM -
Russia Aeroflot14 April 2006N/A
Argentina Aerolíneas Argentinas29 August 2012
Argentina Austral Líneas Aéreas
Mexico Aeroméxico
Mexico Aeroméxico Connect
Spain Air Europa4 September 2007
France Air France
Republic of Ireland CityJet
Italy Alitalia
Taiwan China Airlines28 September 2011
Taiwan Mandarin Airlines
China China Eastern Airlines21 June 2011
China Shanghai Airlines
China China Southern Airlines15 November 2007
Czech Republic Czech Airlines25 March 2001
United States Delta Air Lines22 June 2000
United States Delta Connection
United States Delta Shuttle
Indonesia Garuda Indonesia5 March 2014N/A
Kenya Kenya Airways4 September 2007N/A
Netherlands KLM[nb 3]13 September 2004
Netherlands KLM Cityhopper
South Korea Korean Air 22 June 2000N/A
Lebanon Middle East Airlines28 June 2012
Saudi Arabia Saudia29 May 2012
Romania TAROM25 June 2010
Vietnam Vietnam Airlines10 June 2010
China Xiamen Airlines
ONEWORLD
Germany Air Berlin 0 March 2012
Austria Niki
United States American Airlines1 February 1999
United States American Connection
United States American Eagle
United States US Airways
United States US Airways Express
United Kingdom British Airways1 February 1999
United Kingdom BA CityFlyer
United Kingdom British Airways Limited
South Africa Comair
France OpenSkies
Denmark Sun-Air
Hong Kong Cathay Pacific1 February 1999
Hong Kong Dragonair
Finland Finnair1 September 1999
Finland Flybe Nordic
Spain Iberia1 September 1999
Spain Iberia Regional
Spain Iberia Express
Japan Japan Airlines1 April 2007
Japan J-Air
Japan JAL Express
Japan Japan Transocean Air
Chile LAN Airlines1 June 2000
Argentina LAN Argentina
Ecuador LAN Ecuador
Chile LAN Express
Peru LAN Perú
Colombia LAN Colombia
Malaysia Malaysia Airlines1 February 2013
Australia Qantas[A]1 February 1999
New Zealand Jetconnect
Australia QantasLink
Qatar Qatar Airways30 October 2013N/A
Jordan Royal Jordanian1 April 2007N/A
Russia S7 Airlines15 November 2010
Russia Globus Airlines
Sri Lanka SriLankan Airlines1 May 2014N/A
Brazil TAM Airlines
STAR ALLIANCE
Member airlineJoinedMember affiliates
Slovenia Adria Airways18 November 2004N/A
Greece Aegean Airlines30 June 2010N/A
Canada Air Canada14 May 1997
Canada Air Canada Express
Canada Air Canada rouge
China Air China12 December 2007N/A
India Air India11 July 2014 N/A
New Zealand Air New Zealand3 May 1999
Japan All Nippon Airways15 October 1999
Japan Air Japan
Japan ANA Wings
South Korea Asiana Airlines28 March 2003N/A
Austria Austrian Airlines26 March 2000
Austria Austrian myHoliday
Austria Tyrolean Airways
Colombia Avianca21 June 2012
Costa Rica Avianca Costa Rica
El Salvador Avianca El Salvador
Guatemala Avianca Guatemala
Honduras Avianca Honduras
Nicaragua Avianca Nicaragua
Peru Avianca Peru
Belgium Brussels Airlines9 December 2009N/A
Panama Copa Airlines21 June 2012
Colombia Copa Airlines Colombia
Croatia Croatia Airlines18 November 2004N/A
Egypt EgyptAir11 July 2008
Egypt EgyptAir Express
Ethiopia Ethiopian Airlines13 December 2011N/A
Taiwan EVA Air18 June 2013
Taiwan Uni Air
Poland LOT Polish Airlines26 October 2003N/A
Germany Lufthansa[A]14 May 1997
Germany Lufthansa Regional
Denmark
Norway Scandinavian Airlines[A]
Sweden14 May 1997Finland Blue1
China Shenzhen Airlines29 November 2012N/A
Singapore Singapore Airlines1 April 2000N/A
South Africa South African Airways10 April 2006
South Africa Airlink
South Africa South African Express
Switzerland Swiss International Air Lines1 April 2006
Switzerland Swiss European Air Lines
Portugal TAP Portugal14 March 2005
Portugal Portugalia
Portugal PGA Express
Thailand Thai Airways International[A]14 May 1997
Thailand Thai Smile
Turkey Turkish Airlines1 April 2008N/A
United States United Airlines[A]14 May 1997
United States United Express[B][G]
There are also some airlines that don't belong to a major alliance, but have codeshare agreements with other airlines, forming their own mini-alliances.
For example, Alaska has these alliances, which is a great set of airlines:
Aeromexico
Air France
American Airlines
Cathay Pacific
Delta Air Lines
Emirates
Fiji Airways
KLM
Korean Air
LAN
PenAir
Qantas
Ravn Alaska
Singapore Airlines (interline only)
Virgin Atlantic has codeshare agreements with the following airlines:
Air China
Air New Zealand
All Nippon Airways
Cyprus Airways
Delta Air Lines[50]
Gulf Air
Hawaiian Airlines
Jet Airways
Malaysia Airlines
Scandinavian Airlines
Singapore Airlines
South African Airways
Transaero Airlines
Virgin America
Virgin Australia
As of June 2014, Emirates had codeshare agreements with the following airlines:
Air Mauritius
Alaska Airlines
Royal Air Maroc
All Nippon Airways
Thai Airways International
Korean Air
Singapore Airlines
Garuda Indonesia
Virgin America
Silk Air
Qantas
JetBlue
Royal Jordanian Airlines
Cathay Pacific
Jetstar Asia
Air New Zealand
Philippine Airlines
South African Airways
and Etihad Airways has codeshare agreements with the following airlines (as of March 2014)
Aegean Airlines
Aer Lingus
Air Astana
Air Berlin
Air Canada
Air Europa
Air France
Air Malta
Air New Zealand
Air Seychelles
Air Serbia
airBaltic
Alitalia
All Nippon Airways
American Airlines
Asiana Airlines
Bangkok Airways
Belavia
Brussels Airlines
China Eastern Airlines
Cyprus Airways
Fiji Airways
Flybe
Garuda Indonesia
Hainan Airlines
Jet Airways
JetBlue Airways
Kenya Airways
KLM
Korean Air
Malaysia Airlines
Middle East Airlines
Niki
Philippine Airlines
Royal Air Maroc
S7 Airlines
Saudia
SriLankan Airlines
South African Airways
TAP Portugal
Turkish Airlines
Vietnam Airlines
Virgin Australia
There are some other airlines that aren't part of a major alliance that also have significant partnerships that allow you to earn miles or book award flights as well, though I feel that these are generally the most useful. You can see how having an Alaska airlines account creates a link between all three major alliances, as they partner with American, Delta and Singapore airlines among others. That's very useful.
The earning part is very straight forward. If you're flying one airline in an alliance, you can credit your miles to either your account for that airline, or to any of its partners. Occasionally a discount flight may not be creditable on a partner. Recently I flew the excellent Thai Airlines to BKK, and tried to credit it to partner airline EVA (where i have collected 20,000 plus miles). I didn't know it at the time but the category (i.e. price was too discounted) of ticket was too low to credit to EVA, so I got no credit for the flight. I plan to try to get it credited to my Thai account, but Im less than optimistic. Most airlines don't do this bullshit, but it does happen. Fuck you EVA. (It did say this on their website, but I didn't check before the flight).
By way of easy example, I regularly fly Cathay and credit my miles to my British Airways account. Next year, I may just start crediting to Cathay directly, but for now, I'm using the BA. To reach elite status though, you'll need to credit enough into a single airlines account to reach the status - you cannot combine the mileage you flew within the partners in an alliance to get status (i.e. status is what gives you free lounge access, free luggage fee waivers, upgraded tickets, enhanced mileage earnings, etc, and it is based typically on how many flights and the total mileage credited to a single alliance member airline within a calendar year. It may also require you to fly some flights actually on that airline, regardless of how many flights of other alliance members you credit to your account.).
Another thing to know about the airline alliances is that not all airlines charge the same amount to book award flights on their own flights, or on their partners. Some airlines charge significantly more miles than others to book awards on their own flights, and also some charge more to book awards on partners than on their own flights. Some also charge fuel surcharges on certain routes on their own award flights and on partner flights - that means that even though the ticket is free, you pay anywhere from 50-75$ to hundreds of dollars in fuel costs to book your award, which makes booking that award that much less valuable. It also creates a good reason to know which airlines charge fuel surcharges on flights, and which ones do not. Some airlines don't charge surcharges at all, so even if they charge a few more points to book an award, it may be worth it to use the extra points to avoid a hefty fuel surcharge.
I understand that this is all very general and somewhat complicated, so I hope that by doing this it will lay out the general architecture of the industry so that you can begin to understand the specific rules that apply to the flights you want to book.
Another thing that airlines do, almost uniformly, is try to make it difficult to book award flights, i.e. flights using miles you've earned collected, either on the airline frequent flier program you've earned them on, or on a partner airline. They don't usually make it impossible, though, and so with some knowledge you can make yourself more able to take advantage of the deals that are available.
Here's some ways that the airlines play games to make it harder (but not impossible) to book awards, and here's how to deal with it:
(1) They don't make award flights available until a certain time before the travel date.
The way to deal with this is to check online to see when the airlines "release" award seats, and try to aim to book as close to those dates as possible.
http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2...ard-seats/
Here is a link to an article discussing when airlines make award seats available. Keep in mind that just because they release some seats in this time period, that doesn't mean that all award seats are released at the same time - it becomes helpful to know the policies of the airlines you want to fly (for me its Cathay) so that you know when to check for award seats. I know Cathay has a policy of releasing extra award seats shortly before flights to get rid of them, so I'll use that knowledge to check for award travel in the last week before booking paid travel.
Some airlines don't release as many flights (or at the same time) for partner bookings. Some airlines also block bookings for certain partners (Avianca recently did this for Avianca points holders trying to book on Lufthansa) - this is at the airline equivalent of penis envy, too many of their customers are choosing to book and use their points on a partner airline. There again are too many idiosyncrasies to list them all, so just try to become familiar with the ones most likely to affect your travel. If the issues exists, its likely one of the blogs or more has written about it. You can even set up a google alert to send you articles about your chose mileage or alliance.
(2) They make it hard to find award flights (or, why I like British Airways miles in my BA account).
Most airlines allow you to search for award travel online on their own websites. Most airlines DO NOT allow you to search for partner award tickets on their website. As a result, if you have miles on American Airlines and you want to book their partner, Cathay Pacific airlines for award travel using your American Airlines points, to find out if there are award seats available, you first have to go to Cathay's website and have an account. Then after having an account, you can search their award seat bookings. Then you need to write the numbers down and call American (not online, but call) and tell the agent that you want to book a flight. They'll probably search American, maybe US Airways and tell you that you can book on American or that there is no award available. Even if the flight is available as an American Airliens flight, Cathay is a far superior experience, so you may very well need to point out the exactly flights you want to book on their partner (stupid, I know) so that they can find them and book them for you. And then they'll want to charge you for the phone booking instead of an online booking, which is asinine because its not possible to book the Cathay flight through the American Airlines website. And sometimes, even when you've found the award availability yourself, the rep will be an idiot and won't follow instructions or have some other problem, in which case, hang up and call back and get a new rep to help you. If this all sounds like a huge cluster fuck, well, you get the idea. But there are some tricks.
Most airlines only show their own flights, or maybe their own and one or two partner's flights, available to book as awards. Most, but not all. I've mentioned before, British Airways shows most OneWorld Award availability on its website. That means you should have a BA account even if your OneWorld miles are on American, USAir, or some other partner, because you can use the BA site to find worldwide availability, in one place, regardless of the partner, and then call your airline and book the award. If you're miles are on BA, though, you won't even have to call, as you'll be able to book directly online. That's served me well in Asia recently and its a good reason to keep a small cache of miles for short award flights (BA's awards are distance based and short flights are very cheap on miles) booked through BA on OneWorld. I'm told Quantas is also a good search engines for some award flights, but I actually haven't used it much.
For Star Alliance, the magic partner that allows you to search alliance wide is ANA (All Nippon Airways), which has the best website of the group for finding awards. Actually United's is fairly good too, but sometimes misses awards or shows flights that are actually not available. So again, if you've Star Alliance miles you want to use in Asia or Europe or South America or wherever, search for the award on ANA (you'll need an account, free to set up, but you need to have miles in your account - check this link for some tips for getting miles into an ANA account -
How to search for Star Alliance Awards) or on United, and then call your airline back to book the ticket you found. Get an idiot agent, hang up and call back.
For Skyteam, Delta's online awards search basically sucks. However, the AirFrance/KLM site does a very good job finding Skyteam awards. Once again, if you've collected miles on Delta or another Skyteam member other than AirFrance, check on Airfrance, find the award, call your airline and book. Idiot agent, hang up, rinse and repeat. Here's a link for Skyteam - I've not used this so I'm hoping its accurate...
Skyteam Award Search
(3) They add fuel surcharges to award tickets.
Some airlines will provide access to awards, and you can book them, but when you go to book, you'll see you have to pay fuel surcharges (not like paying for a ticket, but can be 500-800 dollars, for example, for a biz class seat transatlantic) for a so-called award flight. Some airlines don't charge these at all, and some only charge them on partner flights, and some only charge them on partner flights if the partner charges them also. Its actually too much to try to get into, and very specific to the route (for example, BA charges surcharges to fly transatlantic, but not for award flights booked on partners in other locations). Again, consider your specific situation and google to see if you can find out if you'll be looking at fuel surcharges when you go to book. If you are you can consider an alternative, such as booking Iberia rather than British Airways to get a smaller fuel surcharge (they both charge, but Iberia's are significantly less). Both are OneWorld transfer partners and they fly some of the same routes.
(4) They charge more for Partner tickets.
A few days ago, I looked up Finnair's award ticket policy - the minimum amount for a roundtrip on a partner was 60,000 miles. The minimum for a Finnair flight one-way was around 10,000 miles. They don't even make one-ways available for awards. So 60,000 vs. 20,000 miles, roundtrip. This makes collecting on Finnair very unattractive if you're planning to fly on their partners. Basically a non-starter to collect miles to Finnair unless you plan to fly that airline around North Europe. But since their in OneWorld, at least you can fly them and collect their miles to many other partners.
Of the first class airlines, there are others who play these games, making it hard or expensive to use their points within the alliance, and that may make it less likely to collect points in their alliance, or in some cases (Singapore Airlines) make you likely to use points for their flights if their product is exception (Singapore Airlines). Just one more thing to be award of. Collecting Singapore airlines to fly on Singapore is a good idea though as its an amazing airline by all regards, and they have a lot of award space available for booking in Singapore Airlines miles (and not much for partners).
(5) Devaluations.
Not all airlines charge the same amount for award flights, either on their own flights or on partner flights. And those numbers are in flux. Airlines periodically increase (or decrease) the number of miles it takes to book an award flight. Delta and United have recently devalued their points on many routes. United is about to make it more expensive to earn points as well, as they've switched to revenue based (points are being award based on what you spend, not on how far you fly, which is fucked). As a result, if you had a big balance on an airline thats devaluing (say, by making a North America- Europe flight 125,000 biz class instead of 100,000 miles, a 25 percent devaluation), you've lost a chunk of money there. Some airlines even do it without letting people know first, so there's no chance to use the mileage before the devaluation kicks in. If they let you know in advance, at least you can use some miles for a ticket pre-devaluation (or maybe a hotel or some other purpose). This issue is a good reason also to spread your miles among different airlines. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
AWARDS BOOKING SERVICES
There are companies that will, for 100 or 150$, find and book award tickets for you. They'll only charge if they're successful in booking the ticket - for some its very worthwhile to use this service. They know how to play the game, they know the rules, and they'll typically help you understand whats possible. HungWeiLo's excellent thread had a list of several, but if you simply google Award Flight booking service, you'll find reviews of some of the well-known was.
I hope I didn't leave out any big topics, but happy to augment if I did.