Originally Posted by
FT2013
Thanks for the info! Is the best way to find these out just by looking at the websites or have you seen a chart that has all the airlines? Is there a consensus on which airline(s) or alliance(s) are the best for partner awards?
The three big alliances are Star Alliance (United, US Air, Lufthansa, ANA, et al), oneworld (AA, BA, Iberia, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, et al), and Skyteam (Delta, Air France, KLM, Korean Air, et al). In general, *A has best availability, but it all depends on where you want to go, time of year, etc. For *A, ANA website is the most accurate and exhaustive, but is horribly user unfriendly. United is user friendly, includes all *A airlines, and correct 99% of the time. For oneworld, it's not so straightforward. BA is good but will route you on BA if at all possible (high surcharges). AA is very good but doesn't show Iberia or Cathay availability. Qantas shows all airlines, but not always all availability. I prefer to use AA if I'm not trying to book on IB or CX. For IB I use Iberia and for CX I use Qantas. Unfortunately I don't know much about Skyteam.