Because my stepmom was trying to figure out what to do with her Membership Rewards points, I did a bit more searching on Star Alliance and Skyteam as well as OneWorld. ANA also has a distance based award system for Star Alliance partners - the magic number for them is 8,000 miles total distance for 65,000 miles in Business. That's as far as JFK-TXL, but I don't think much use on transpacific jumps. It's not as dramatic a savings as CX vs. BA or AA but it could be of some use.

More on my blog - http://www.leighwitchel.com/blog/arc...mileage_1.html