Fair enough. :)

I agree that the ATI issue is very large although to be fair to OneWorld, BA and AA have tried to cooperate on two occasions and the authorities on both sides of the atlantic denied their request. Both ST and *A have therefore had a pretty large advantage in recent years as their requests for ATI were allowed. Hopefully in the next few months, this will be granted which I agree with you will be good for those of us preferring to use BA and AA on TATL flights.

I'm not sure how you got the information that QF and BA allow upgrades on each other's services. Sadly this is not the case as much as I would have liked. CX is the only carrier which operates this type of services although its pretty restrictive. I should point out that on *A the fares required to upgrade across *A are pretty expensive fares and IMHO are probably not worth blowing the miles on - i.e. bang for the buck is not high. :(

In respect to your last comment on European coverage, I do have to agree somewhat. Personally I think this was something that MA was meant to provide although sadly it has not materialised that way. LX would have been perfect but sadly that ship has now sailed. Hopefully something tangible happens sooner rather than later to sort this issue out.

I think you need to recognise that all the three alliances are marketing alliances and the level of integration is still fairly minimal. I have even had ticketing issues between LX and LH in the past and they are part of the same company.

Seating is an issue across all alliances and something I also would like to see more of. The issue you describe affects us all and I suspect it more down to the amount of programming effort required to put in all aircraft seating configurations into the host airline website. It's getting better as time passes, but there is still much to do no matter which alliance you travel on.

Finally I do have to state that there are aspects of one airline or alliance that I prefer over the other and IMHO, I would probably rate OW and *A pretty much on par. I prefer OW lounges, but some benefits on some *A carriers such as extra baggage allowance and alliance wide priority is fantastic. In fact if I had a choice between Star Alliance Gold and OneWorld Sapphire, I would almost certainly pick Star Alliance Gold. As I happen to move between several large OneWorld hubs however, the F lounge access I get as as an Emerald is still the benefit I enjoy the most. As always YMMV. :)

Not really. RTW's are a tiny, tiny percentage of tickets and revenue. The main thing for the airlines are code shares to keep people within the alliance no matter what their destination.

Whilst I agree with you on RTWs being a small fraction of overall revenue, codeshares are not about keeping people on an alliance. Codeshares are set up by carriers not serving a destination when they feel they can make additional revenue on a route they don't serve using their own code.

For example, if AA think they can sell a fair number of pax on a BA flight to CAI, they would set up a code on the BA flight negotiating how the revenue sharing arrangement would work. My understanding is that there are several revenue sharing models that can be put in place for flights coded by a codeshare partner. BA for example might suggest that the AA code entitles AA to 30% of the overall cabin and therefore AA is responsible for selling tickets up to that 30% mark although providing a significant margin (but AA also have a greater share in the risk in this model). Another alternative would be for BA to retain control and simply provide a small margin to AA for flights placed on the AA code but for BA to retain overall control of sales. There have been some excellent and more detailed posts on this topic before on both this forum as well as the QF forum if you want further information, although in essence, codeshares have little necessarily to do with alliances.

FWIW, a JSA is a much more integrated approach but discussions of JSAs are better left to other threads. :)

Perhaps I didn't explain it well, but essentially alliances are just an advanced form of codeshares. The bottom line is the same. It's all about competition within the market.

Just expanding on the issue about codeshares, here is a good example of where OW programmes work better than *A.

Take for example an AA programme member wanting to travel on BA J from LHR to SYD but wants to get the elite bonus QF offers. The AA member would book the QF coded BA flight which would entitle the AA programme member to the elite bonus yet travel on BA.

Another example would be a QF member wanting to get the elite bonus offered on BA flights on a service between LHR and HEL which is not offered on AY. The member prefers to travel AY over BA so can take a BA coded AY flight to get the elite bonus offered on BA flights.

The above examples would be not possible on *A as on *A programmes, it is the metal which counts and not the code, not to mention the issue surrounding how fare class codes translate between carriers (*A carriers are not so good on the fare class harmonisation side). To expand on this, a BD member wanting to take a BD coded flight operated by SQ metal for example in J class between LHR and SIN would find they would still only get the SQ J class COS of 1.5 x compared to the 2.0 x offered by BD itself.

Just some food for thought.

Mostly true, but not completely so. UA MP members flying LH TATL get the full bonus miles as if it were UA metal. Not sure about all the other permutations since there are so many *A members now.

There are no absolutes, but in general OW treats codeshares more generously than *A.

FWIW, the oneworld site claims the RTW *ONE* as the alliance's flagship fare:

- http://www.oneworld.com/ow/news/details?objectID=19117
"...the alliance's flagship round-the-world oneworld Explorer fare..."

- http://www.oneworld.com/ow/news/details?objectID=18907
"Its flagship alliance fare is oneworld Explorer..."

It might be the alliance's flagship product, but it still does not make up a large proportion of fares sold. stimpy's statements above still very much hold water.