When I sought to redeem a UA M+ award on an Ansett flight, no seats were available. AN then advised me to use my Ansett points for an award flight, as award flights were available using those points. I suspect QF works similarly. My experience indicates that airlines continue to look after their own first, and alliance partners second. Will be interesting to see if that really changes as Ansett joins Star and Qantas becomes part of oneworld. If you switch to earning through QF rather than Aadvantage, remember that there are no tier bonus points added on the Australian schemes, just class of ticketing bonus. UA's 100% bonus for Prem. Execs has no Australian equivalent.