Well, this is not really an argument (about Easter Island, at least), IMHO. In fact, OW is the ONLY alliance that offers flights to IPC, nobody else flies there AFAIK.

I think OW's key advantage over it's competitors is the strength of it's members lounges. 3 core OW members in particular (BA, QF and CX) all have excellent lounges in both F and J when compared to their *A and ScaryTeam equivalents. Even OW's other big carrier AA offers fairly decent lounges when compared to other US carriers, which is great for those travelling within North America.

I also like the 3 elite tiers that OW offers, although I do wish benefits such as priority baggage was provided alliance wide.

To the people who bang on about consistency being such a strength of OW:

Have you flown MA recently??

Are you pleased with the pay-for-water service concept offered in IB Y? How about the 4-hour 'business class' flights in standard economy seats on IB and BA (no, this is not how all European airlines do it- some actually collapse the middle seat and share the space between the other two)?

Had you flown CX "regional" business class when their "region" used to include Australia? Do you think the so-called lieflat CX C product in its first generation (which AFAIK is still flying pretty long sectors e.g. AMS) is a "great travel option", especially when getting access to an arrivals facility is a lottery?

I hear people banging on about CX lounges. I've not been to a lot, but do they really have such great lounges outside HKG?

This post is not meant to say that oneworld is so bad and that the other alliances are so much better. All of them are all over the place and the simple fact is that membership in any of the three alliances should never be interpreted as a guarantee of good service.

Personally, I feel that one alliance being better than another is all a matter of geographical coverage and market positioning, and therefore strictly individual.

For example, 80% of my travel is within Europe. It would be incredibly foolish to pay for business class for those flights, so I would never make any BA status, and it's always more convenient to connect in the middle as opposed to backtracking and/or suffering a transcon before/after a very short flight, which strikes out flying with 3 out of 4 European ow members. That would leave me with Malev, which is a mediocre airline that's based in a grim airport and only seems to fly to 4 destinations outside of Albania and Moldova.

OTOH, the Skyteam airlines offer fantastic coverage of Europe, with loads of sensible connections, and that's why I mostly fly with them (*A also have good coverage, but I hate FRA and I seem to be very unlucky whenever I fly LX, so I only use them occasionally).

Similarly, it would take a complete idiot to choose ST over OW if they mostly flew around South America.

A *G benefit is extra luggage (20kg where weight concept applies, one extra piece where piece concept applies. In many cases the limit for each piece is also higher although this is not official).

I believe neither ST nor OW offer this benefit, though I'm happy to be corrected.

Skyteam definitely don't offer it (though they do offer the yellow 'priority' tag that helps you identify your bag after everyone has gotten theirs).

I find the extra baggage allowance one of the most useful *G benefits ^ and I'm puzzled that the other alliances don't offer something similar.

The priority tags on *A work (or should I say do not work) in the same way :D , except that they are red.

No, CX flies the 74As which are equipped with new products to AMS.

LHR comes to mind, when compared to other oneworld options in T3. Which carrier has great lounges outside of their respective homebases anyway?

Don't OW sapphire and emerald members get extra luggage allowance as well?

Indeed, OW airlines do not seem to have a 'unified' priority tags. Each seem to have business or first tags... and I don't mind that ;) OW Emeralds usually get F class tags (:D) if the airline has F class (BA, CX, QF, etc.).

I think it's only on the OW airline you have status on: http://www.oneworld.com/ow/ffp/oneworld-status

MA is the red headed step child of OW, and has taken over the reigns from EI. The rest of OW however is a different matter

To be fair to IB, the product in Spain offered by IB's Spanish competitors is pretty similar.

I for one am not the biggest fan of CX regional, however for many services where it is used on 2-5 hour flights, it's far better than the equivalent offered in Europe. It's also equivalent to SQ which is CX's main competitor who is also guilty of subs to non MEL/SYD Australian services.

Outside of HKG, some CX lounges are a little disappointing, but I think your missing the point. The quality of OW lounges at OW hubs is overall better than that offered by OW's competition. I believe this is also the case at outstations and is not limited to CX.

IMHO, I find OW offers the best product, however *A offers the best integration. I can't really talk about ST, as I really have only flown AF and CO which is far too small a representation of the alliance.

It's not just about geographical coverage. I still believe it is about the overall quality of the product on offer.

There are a lot of us who happily pay to fly J even on short haul flights so I don't think you can compare your experience to those who I suspect fly significantly more frequently than yourself.

I have flown LX many times and IMHO they are Europe's most consistent carrier. Never fantastic, but almost always good. Most importantly during irrops, LX in my experience handles these extremely well.