Originally Posted by
jensenma74
I would have thought that an alliance, where you earn points across all airlines, would also give you the opportunity to use across all airlines. Giving the ultimate benefit to the loyal customer who sticks to alliance member only airlines.BA allows to use avios on both AA and IB. Have not flown AY before, but would have thought it was similar.
At Staralliance, you can both earn and redeem points across all airlines within the alliance.
You're confused. You can use your BA avios to redeem for any airline in the one world alliance (IB, AA, CX...) same with star alliance, ie, you can use your United miles to redeem for a Lufthansa flight. However you cannot use your United miles to upgrade a Lufthansa economy ticket to a business class ticket. Same goes for One World.
This is not and most likely has never been a benefit provided by any alliance as far as I know.