It will be very nice to see a consistent (or extant) mileage upgrade policy across the alliance, which is really what they seem to be talking about; I would not expect this to become a complimentary upgrade tool (a la CO/NW), though I suppose it is possible.

I do find it a bit interesting that they have to implement this "broker" system to handle the inter-system communication. It seems to me that *A took care of that issue quite a while ago. Then again, SkyTeam never really did seem to focus on the "seamless" part of the inter-carrier activity.