While I'm from Boston, I'm posting this from a conference room at 511 Fifth Avenue in NYC!

OneWorld is an alliance of several airlines, including AA from the US, British Airways (good for connecting through London to Europe, the mideast and Africa) and several others. You join the FF program of any of these airlines and, with some exceptions, earn miles on any of them as if you had flown on "your" airline. You give your membership number on any of them to any of the others; they do the rest. I'm a member of AA's program but have earned miles on BA and Qantas flights as if they were AA flights.

There are some restrictions on earning miles on other airlines. The most important ones to AA members are that you get no AA credit for trans-Atlantic flights on BA, partial credit for deeply discounted fares on Cathay Pacific, and fractional credit on Iberia. (I have no experience with them, but others have suggested that it's the oneWorld carrier of last resort anyway.) Also, your home airline generally treats you better (especially in terms of upgrades) than other OW members do. So, while there's a good deal of crossing of benefits, it's not 100 percent.

It's usually a good idea to join the program of the airline on which you'll do the bulk of your flying, though there are exceptions. You may be one of them: if you prefer to focus your trans-Atlantic flying on BA rather than AA, and you hardly ever fly at discount economy fares, a North American membership in BA's program could work out better than joining AA's. One big plus is that you would get free access to AA lounges once you qualify for the requisite elite level. On AA, you only get free access when you're flying on an international itinerary that day.

You can find more information about oneWorld at their official site, http://www.oneworldalliance.com , or at the excellent unofficial site maintained by one of our most helpful fellow FlyerTalkers, "FewMiles," at http://fewmiles.tripod.com/oneworld .

If you have more questions specifically about oneWorld, the forum for that alliance (scroll way down the list for the alliances section) would be the best place to ask them.

[edited (1) to add last paragraph (2) to insert a space after the OW URL so it will work]

[This message has been edited by Efrem (edited 12-31-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Efrem (edited 01-01-2002).]