Resource for selecting airline when focus airlines are not available?
 

I follow the FT mantra of focusing as much travel as possible on a single airline and a single hotel group. I have a few miles and points in secondary airline and hotel accounts. But I wonder if there exists somewhere on FT a listing of airlines and FF partners that would assist me in choosing options when an obvious choice is not available.

More specifically: My primary loyalty is with Delta. I know I also have options on Skyteam airlines, and a smattering of non-Skyteam DL partners on which I can earn Skymiles (but what about MQMs?) But I'm looking for a flight from London to Manchester (UK) next month and the Air France options don't work timewise because of the required connection in Paris. And lower-tier fare classes on AF don't earn Skymiles anyway. I'd like to be able to consult a listing on Flyertalk that would allow me to look up BA and see if their partners include those in whose FF programs I already have miles that I could supplement by flying on BA. And if not, what about BMI? In my case, I'm looking for flights I could credit to either USAir or AA.

I think I can find the necessary info for my upcoming situation, but it occurred to me that this must be a not-uncommon situation for a lot of FTers, but I have not seen such a resource on FT. Does it exist? And if not, can we create one?

The problem is not just creating one, but upkeep afterwards. This stuff keeps changing all the time (especially if you want to be as detailed as which fare codes earn partner stuff at what percentage!).

And the answers get complicated quickly. One example, as you note, is that a particular partner may not earn on a particluar fare code. Or a particular partner may only give a fraction of actual miles, and/or a fraction of qualifying miles, on a particular fare code. Or a particular partner may not give class-of-service bonuses while another partner does. But even more complicated are particular partner quirks, like BA and AA not earning each other's miles when flying US<->Europe, but earning if you fly via Canada. (You can earn AA if you fly LAX-(AS)-Vancouver-(BA)-LHR, but you can't earn AA if you fly LAX-(BA)-LHR.)

I'm not sure who is going to put all that into a table for all airlines and how and how someone could maintain it. It seems to me it has to be done on an airline-by-airiline basis, and the person interested has to search on an airline by airline basis.

The best I think could be hoped for is a wiki specific to each airline. I know there's one for AA, I don't know how many others...

Having said all that, I'm not sure how much effort is worth it for London-MAN. It's not that far, you're not going to earn all that much with anyone. This is the kind of distance for which in the US many people who just say, shucks, Southwest has a convenient schedule, the planes are comfortable enough for a short flight, so I'll fly them even though I don't collect with them and my status doesn't work there.

Yeah, I can see the problem with all the fine points and upkeep required.

But just to the point about LON-MAN not being worth the worry, in my case I have something like 99,500 US miles, and a family of four. So boosting that account over 100k is worth a lot more to me than just another 500 or 1000 miles.

An ExpertFlyer subscription can be helpful, because it allows you to restrict flight searches by alliance. You can fly LON-MAN on BA (OneWorld, credit to AA) or BD (Star, credit to US).

http://expertflyer.com