When you look at the comparisons with Star the difference is pretty striking. They've now lowered the bar and starting flirting with Westjet and Gol, two LCC's.

SkyTeam has no sense of direction (stuck between the two objectives of *A and OW). They're basically turning into a poor copy of *A - desperate for members.

For example, *A is looking to become the biggest alliance - therefore, there will always be some top-end (SQ/OZ) and some lower-end (UA/CA etc.). oneworld is looking to become a high-quality alliance with CX/QF/BA/JL/LA/MX etc. - which explains why they are relatively conservative in recruiting new members while *A is open.

Maybe because the alliance was formed from the leftover carriers to start with?

Gol is a special case, it is semi-LCC, but is also the dominant carrier by far in Brazil, and now that it is eating much of what was Varig, is becoming the primary Brazilain int'l carrier. All the alliances are after Gol, so that is not a fair comparison.

Regarding what are, and what are not "quality partners" is in the eye of the beholder. I have heard newbies on FT bleat on for years about how "there is no Australian/Oceanian partner in ST". Well, Qantas and AirNZ are spoken for, so its sort of tough to get anyother major partners in those two countries which have a whopping population total of 25 million or so. Not very experienced people s...... at Aeroflot as a member, while those of us who actually have to fly to Russia, not only appreciate the service, but know for example that Aeroflot Europe services in Business Class beat any and every other European carrier.

The only "quality" airlines left are the Gulf carriers and for a variety of reasons none of the larger ones will be entering an alliance for quite some time.

Oh I'm not so sure about that. How many intl routes does Gol have vs TAM?!

Another thing is that the consolidation through the AF-KL(-AZ) and DL-NW mergers have made ST more or less circle around these two big airlines, making it less of an alliance IMHO

Polemic aside, DJ is the other major carrier in the South Pacific area and they are getting closer to DL at the moment so there is a chance that they might end up in ST in the future.

This entire premise is horse crap.

I am top tier in all three of the major alliances.

ST, *A, and OW all have good and poor carriers.

Malev and Iberia are not exactly top tier products, in fact, BA is not that great anymore. The food in QF's longhaul F was terrible 3 weeks ago.

I am convinced that those who insist on proclaiming the qualitative superiority of one alliance over another have very little comparitive experience to base their opinions.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I always laugh when people proclaim certain alliance is better than the other. Besides MA and IB, RJ is not a very good airline either and it is in OW.

*A also has its fair share of bad airlines as well - CA, UA, US, MS, JK, TP, and SN to name a few.

Have you actually flown Gol? The bar they set is well above what economy is like on UA, US or AA.

Yup,

New planes, free drinks (including beer), free snack, free candy, friendly young (good looking) Brasilian staff.

Much better than the pitiful SAS flight last night where they charge for water! I don't think it is possible to lower the bar any further without starting bathroom charges.

I wouldn't say good/bad based on the quality of the individual airlines. I would judge based on what coverage they offer. The ability to actually get where you are going within the alliance is really the best judge of value IMO. And SkyTeam is lacking significantly there.

I fully agree with UMD and the comment he/she refers to.

@ sbm12: Also the coverage of an airline alliance is in the eye of the beholder. Apart from the mere number of destinations (Skyteam has less than StarAlliance, but significantly more than Oneworld), coverage includes also easy connections and is subjective in so far as it depends on where you typically fly.

For me, Skyteam works absolutely fine, and coverage would definitely not be an aspect under which I, in view of the number of destinations that Skyteam offers and in view of my personal travel patterns, would consider Skyteam an inferior alliance.

Agreed that, in most cases it is a YMMV situation. The fact that there are more carriers in *A means that a passenger has more options for connection points and more chances that the carrier might be good. It also means more chances that the carrier might be bad. That being said, judging carriers overall rather than individual experiences is, IME, a recipe for disaster. Yes, broad strokes can be drawn, but saying that US is awful or that LH is phenomenal is denying things like the US 332 in C is actually quite solid and the LH 744 in Y is quite dire.

If the alliance gets you where you are going and between destinations well then it works for you. I found SkyTeam quite limited in a few areas that I was trying for but great in others.

And what about domestic partnerships?

Who ever's fault is was it doesn't matter because the result is that two good domestic carriers, Continental and Midwest are out of Skyteam.

It is as though DL wants to be the only domestic carrier in Skyteam (the partnership with Alaska sure seems to be lagging far behind on some nebulus calendar what was promised).