Have you ever tried to book a flight with your points and thought, “Why can’t I find anything for a good price?” Or maybe you’ve wondered how other people seem to have such an easy time finding award flight options. Well, there’s a secret to unlocking way more options: Airline alliances and partnerships.

These relationships between airlines let you earn and redeem miles across multiple carriers, which means more routes, more seats, and sometimes way better deals. Let’s break it down.

 ➡️ Check out the best travel rewards cards

What Are Airline Alliances?

Airline alliances are partnerships between a group of airlines. Airlines within the same alliance work together to share routes, schedules, and benefits. If one airline doesn’t fly where you want to go, another member of its alliance might. Or both airlines might fly the same route, but the points price varies between them.

When airlines are in the same alliance, you can sometimes use miles to book flights on one alliance partner while flying on another. For example, you could book a flight that is operated by United, but booked through Air Canada using Air Canada miles. This is why knowing about and understanding alliances is a key part of award travel.

It’s also an intermediate skill, so if you’re brand new to points and miles, start here instead. Then come back once you’re more comfortable using points to book flights!

The Three Major Alliances

There are three major airline alliances – Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam. It’s important to know which airlines are part of which alliance so that you can check with partners when looking for flights.

Here are the members of each alliance.

STAR ALLIANCE MEMBERS:

• Aegean Airlines
• Air Canada
• Air China
• Air India
• Air New Zealand
• All Nippon Airways
• Asiana Airlines
• Austrian Airlines
• Avianca
• Brussels Airlines
• Copa Airlines
• Croatia Airlines
• EGYPTAIR
• Ethiopian Airlines
• EVA AIR
• LOT Polish Airlines
• Lufthansa
• Shenzhen Airlines
• Singapore Airlines
• South African Airways
• SWISS International Air Lines
• TAP Air Portugal
• Thai Airways
• Turkish Airlines
• United Airlines

ONEWORLD MEMBERS:

• Alaska Airlines (which recently merged with Hawaiian Airlines)
• American Airlines
• British Airways
• Cathay Pacific
• Finnair
• Iberia
• Japan Airlines
• Malaysia Airlines
• Qantas
• Qatar Airways
• Royal Air Maroc
• Royal Jordanian
• Srilankan Airlines

SKYTEAM MEMBERS:

• Aerolíneas Argentinas
• Aeroméxico
• Air Europa
• Air France
• China Airlines
• China Eastern Airlines
• Czech Airlines
• Delta Air Lines
• Garuda Indonesia
• ITA Airways
• Kenya Airways
• KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
• Korean Air
• Middle East Airlines
• Saudia
• TAROM
• Vietnam Airlines
• Virgin Atlantic
• Xiamen Airlines

Why This Matters for Award Bookings

Airline alliances massively expand your redemption options. Here’s how:

1. Find award seats when your favorite airline is sold out
   If Delta doesn’t have award seats available to Europe (or they cost way too many miles), you might still snag a seat on Virgin Atlantic or Flying Blue.
2. Book your seats for far fewer points or taxes
   The taxes on flights to Japan booked through British Airways are high, but you can book the same ticket through American Airlines for just $5.60.
3. Book flights on carriers you’ve never flown
   Even if you’ve never flown Lufthansa before, you can use your United miles to book their flights thanks to their Star Alliance partnership.

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Partnerships Beyond Alliances

Not all partnerships are part of these big three alliances. Airlines can also have separate agreements with carriers outside their alliance, which can either be loyalty partnerships or codeshare partnerships. These partnerships can give you even more options for using your points to book flights.

For example, JetBlue is not part of an airline alliance, but has partnerships with Hawaiian Airlines, Icelandair, Turkish Airlines, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, and more.

Some of these loyalty or codeshare partnerships allow for points redemptions, while others are mostly about earning miles for a partner airline.

How to Use Airline Alliances to Book Award Flights

Let’s take a look at some examples of booking award flights through airline alliance partners.

To start, I often look for saver award fares on one of the three main U.S. airlines – United (Star Alliance), Delta (SkyTeam alliance), or American (Oneworld). These fares are typically the ones that may be available to book with a partner airline.

Star Alliance Example

For this example, I’m searching for flights from Los Angeles (LAX) to Maui (OGG). I will use United’s award calendar to search for the lowest dates (select “flexible dates” when you search to bring up the calendar).

Click on a date with a green price to see the Saver Award flight.

You can see that this flight is 16k United miles and $5.60 in taxes and fees. Now let’s check some alliance partners.

I typically check Air Canada second.

I can see that the price is just 1,000 miles less, but the taxes are higher. It’s a personal choice whether the higher taxes are worth saving a few thousand points. Notice how it says “Operated by United Airlines.”

Next, let’s check Turkish Airlines.

I tried multiple dates, and none of them showed availability.

Finally, let’s look at Singapore Airlines.

When I first searched, it showed no seats available. But you’ll notice that’s because it automatically checks for flights on Singapore Airlines only. You need to select “Star Alliance” for it to check partner flights.

Ta-da! Availability for that same United flight. However, this is the most expensive option points-wise, so it wouldn’t be my first choice.

SkyTeam Example

You can repeat this same process for other airlines and alliances. Let’s look at one more example.

I want to search for flights from Boston (BOS) to London (LHR). Off the bat, I know that both Virgin Atlantic and Flying Blue (Air France/KLM’s award program) typically have great deals for flights to Europe, so I will check those out first.

The Air France website is showing three different options – two direct flights operated by Delta and Virgin Atlantic, and one connecting flight operated by Air France.

Operated by Delta – 21k miles + $33 in taxes and fees.

Operated by Virgin Atlantic – 21.5k miles and $91.20 in taxes and fees.

Operated by Air France – 25k miles and $122.40 in taxes and fees.

Of these three options, the flight operated by Delta is the cheapest in both miles and taxes.

Let’s make sure to do our due diligence and check out our options directly with Virgin Atlantic and Delta.

Here’s what it looks like on the Virgin Atlantic website. Much, much cheaper points-wise! However, the taxes are significantly higher at $110.

Finally, here are the options booked through Delta. They have both the Delta-operated flight and the Virgin Atlantic-operated flight. Both are higher in points, but just $6 in taxes and fees.

At this point, you can look at all of your options and decide what works best for you. Would you rather pay more in points but less in taxes? Would you rather pay less in points but more in taxes? Or would you rather land somewhere in the middle?

There’s no wrong answer!

 ➡️ Check out the best travel rewards cards

Airline Alliance Partners vs Bank Transfer Partners

There is a whole other layer to consider when looking at airline alliances. You may find a great flight option, but then you have to figure out how to get the points to book it. It gets a little trickier because you also have to think about which flexible bank points transfer to which airline programs.

For example, in the London example above, let’s pretend that booking with Delta was the lowest points option. If you have Delta miles, then you’re all set. However, if you don’t, there’s a problem. None of the major banks transfer directly to Delta.

So instead, you would need to choose one of the booking options through Air France or Virgin Atlantic because they are both transfer partners with all four major banks, which means any of your flexible points could be used. You’d transfer your points to Air France or Virgin Atlantic, book the ticket through them, but still be flying on Delta.

I know all of this sounds like a lot at first! But I promise, once you’ve done it a few times, it really does start to click.

RELATED: How to Book Award Flights

Airline Alliances Cheat Sheet

Here’s a chart to help you find some of my recommended alliance partners. These are the ones where you can often find the best deals and availability. However, options are not limited to these! It’s just a good starting point.

Alliance	U.S. Airline(s)	Other Airlines to Check
Star Alliance	United Airlines	Avianca, ANA, Air Canada, Singapore Airlines, Turkish Airlines
Oneworld	American Airlines, Alaska Airlines	British Airways, Japan Airlines, Qatar Airways, Cathay Pacific
SkyTeam	Delta Air Lines	Air France, KLM, Virgin Atlantic

Award Search Tools

Using award search tools is a helpful way to find flight options. Instead of searching each airline’s website individually, these tools allow you to see multiple programs at once, set alerts for hard-to-find routes, and filter results to fit your travel needs. Some of my favorite options are:

• PointsYeah
• Seats.aero
• AwardTool
• Roame.travel
• Point.me

You can use these search tools as starting points for what flights are available and for how many points, then move on to searching that airline’s alliance partners to see if there are better deals.

Read more about all of these search options and what they each offer in my award search tools blog post.

Final Thoughts

Airline alliances and partnerships make your points so much more powerful. They give you access to flights on airlines you’ve never flown, open up routes that you may not have found otherwise, and help you find award seats when it feels like nothing’s available. Once you understand how alliances work and where to look for those flights, you’ll start seeing way more options, opening up more opportunities to use your points to book bucket list trips for less.