...which is a policy I wish Star Alliance would adopt. It's a great policy. Unfortunately, emailing this suggestion to the Star Alliance business office in Germany resulted in a rather email: "Oneworld is not a Star Alliance member. For more information, you will need to contact your loyalty programme service centre directly." Umm, yeah...

Anyway, my personal rule on connecting with separate tickets is to look at flight schedules and give myself the greater of:

a) the ability to absorb a 3-hour delay and still make the connection
b) at least two backup rerouting options that my first airline can put me on in the event my original flight is canceled and still get me to the connection point in time to catch my second flight

That might be a little bit of overkill, but when you're looking at possibly having to front thousands of dollars for an emergency last-minute booking if your second carrier is not cooperative, you can never be too careful.