Episode 11: Understanding Airline Alliances & Partnerships Before Redeeming Points

We've gone through many different episodes on how to look for airline travel credit cards and I think now we're approaching to the point where some you guys can start redeeming these points.  

Now if you are at this point where you've already actually spent the minimum requirement and then gotten the bonus points and deposited into your airline account, then you're ready to kind of figure out well how do I redeem these points in the best way and efficiently. Before we even start with the redeeming process we have to first look at the different airline alliances and the relationship they have with each other. 

Majority of people who get these airlines travel credit cards will not knowingly know that they can actually redeem them on partner airlines. What they'll do is that they have like the Delta Gold Sky miles card then they'll just only redeem them on Delta Airline flights or if it's the Citi AAdvantage credit card, they will just only redeem them on American Airlines credit card. 

And many times, these people will only redeem them on domestic flights (especially within the United States), and when you look at the kind of the points for dollars spend that's not really maximizing the points to the best of the ability, and you really want to just maximize the points as much you can and for the most part usually and this is typically. 

This is not always the case but typically redeeming your points on international flights is the better deal. Redeeming these points on partner airlines that are not U.S. flights is usually the better deal primarily more so for the cabin experience. Let me preface and say that "NOT" all U.S. based airlines are horrible, but they're not as good as international airlines in terms of most cabin experiences. 

Generally redeeming points for business and first class holds a better point to dollar yield than using them on coach flights. But again that like I said that's just your own personal preferences on if you want to fly a U.S. based carrier or you want to fly on an international carrier or if you want to fly in coach or in business or first, and depending on how many points you have, how many points you're going to spend.

Before we actually get into how you would be in these points on the airline sites. We need to do a crash course on kind of how all these airlines kind of work together. 

There are three major airline alliances around the world and they are Star Alliance, One world and Sky Team. 

So in terms of pairing these airline alliances with their respective US major legacy carriers: 

United Airlines is with Star Alliance.

American Airlines is with One World 

Delta Airlines is with Sky Team. 

And since the consolidation of many of the major U.S. airline carriers, now these are the three remaining legacy carriers left with their associated airline alliance. 

Star Alliance

So start with Star Alliance. Star Alliance includes many different members including Aegean airlines the Local Group airline, Air Canada, Air China, Air India, Air New Zealand, Avianca, Taiwanese airline, Eva air, Germany airline Lufthansa, Singapore Airline, South Africa Airways, Thai Airways, Turkish Airlines and so on and so forth.

There's many airlines in them and right now they have twenty seven full members in their airline alliance. And as you will kind of eventually see certain airline alliances kind of have a stronghold in certain parts of the world. And for the most part I would say that Star Alliance has a great stronghold with their flights that go to East Asia and to the European regions. So they would be a great choice if you were to use your United Airline points to fly to these areas. Also these would be a good opportunity to use your United Airline points on great airline cabin service. One of those examples is using your United points with Ana Nippon Airways which is the Japanese airline or you know the Singapore Airlines, Thai airways, Eva Airways these you know these four five star airlines that you want to be flying with you could potentially be using them when you're flying overseas. 

One World

And moving onwards the next airline alliance is the One World Alliance which has fourteen members in it. So not as big as Star Alliance but it's you know still useful. The One World team includes the five star airlines Cathay Pacific, British Airways, Iberia, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, the Australian airline, Royal Jordanian and Qatar Airways and many more.

Their stronghold is really great particularly with Central and South America. Big network in that region, and also you know just the ease in getting to Australia is great because Qantas is located there. 

Sky Team

And then the last airline alliance is Sky Team and that has twenty members. So Sky Team is kind of the middle dog in between Star Alliance which is the biggest in terms of the number of members and one world which is the smallest. Sky Team includes Air France, KLM, Korean Air, Vietnam airlines, China Airlines, Czech Airlines, Aero Mexico and so on and so forth. 

And you know out of the three major airlines is I actually think that the Sky Team airline alliance is the weakest, not just with the number of airlines in it or the type of airlines in it but also you know the points that you can use on the Delta Sky Miles is kind of weak than the other airlines in the One World and Star Alliance. So if you did start out with the travel hacking, I'd recommend starting out with using points via United or American Airlines on the Star Alliance and One World networks, just to get that started.

But again I definitely think that using the airline alliances will definitely help. Although there's going to be one continent where it's going to be weak. 

For all three of the airline alliances and that would be Africa, because there's not as many African based airlines that are part of the airline alliances. Obviously the exception of South Africa Airways down the tip of the African continent. 

Europe is definitely well covered. East Asia is also well covered as well. And Australia New Zealand is covered by the respective airlines at Qantas and air New Zealand. 

So pretty much that covers the airline alliances. But note that there are many airlines out there that aren't part of any airline alliance and those include Hawaiian Airlines, Alaskan Airlines for just the U.S. domestic carriers that are not part of any airline alliances. However they are partnered with other airlines out there who are part of these airline alliances. So you can sometimes use your bonus points to get there.

JetBlue’s is one of those examples as well is not part of the airline alliances but it is partnered with pretty much all the major airlines out there in being able to use your JetBlue Points on specific carrier routes that allow you to use JetBlue points. Likewise same with Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines. The easiest way to know if your specific airline is partnered with any of them is simply by looking at their website or just typing in an airline plus travel partners and you can pull up the page and see which airlines will be partnered up with. So again this is really helpful. This is kind of more of just the research phase so that you kind of like you know understanding how these airline alliances and their partners play out.

So remember your list of cities and countries and then the hubs that you kind of put out and the airlines that you might be flying. Now you can kind of put in next to those airlines the alliances that they're part of and any partner airlines that they're with. 

This information will be helpful down the line and you go and book flights and see the different choices and then you will realize okay I can book this flight with a partner airline and so on and so forth. 

In the coming episodes I'll show you how I do searches to find the best airline point deals and obviously having a flexible schedule is a lot more easy than if you can only travel at certain times and dates, but I totally understand that not everyone has super flexibility. I'll be going over these techniques and hopefully it will be beneficial to you trying to find the best airline point redemptions. 

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Which "alliance" do you prefer to stick with?

Which airline do you stay exclusive with?

Just comment and let me know if you guys have any questions that you want me to address. 

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If you missed, Episode 10: How to Organize and Keep Track of All of Your Credit Cards

Next, Episode 12: Redeeming Your Airline Points for Cheap or First Class Travel

Follow me @hustletoparadise to stay up to date on future episodes of Travel Hacking with Hustle to Paradise.

(Introduction photo courtesy of Chuttersnap found on Unsplash)