Originally Posted by
San Gottardo
For day-to-day use the only substantial difference between the two for me is that with Star Alliance you have lounge access also on domestic-only flights of alliance partners, whereas with SkyTeam you don't.
On Star Alliance, that really depends. There is no blanket lounge access guarantee for Star Golds on all domestic flights....
And anyway, in general most people who have settled on AZ for status are aware that it is their "Skyteam" programme, and will be used to that. Most frequent travellers will already have a Star Alliance and/or oneworld account sorted out, too. It would cause disruption to those plans (for me, too!) if Millemiglia was suddenly to morph over into one of the other alliances where you already had an alternate in place. Perhaps in the end it won't matter so much to many people - the majority of AZ fliers probably don't and won't fly much with other Skyteam airlines after any such change - but for me, it would be a biggie!