Mastering the Skies: How Learning About Airline Alliances Can Transform Your Travel Experience

Mastering the Skies: How Learning About Airline Alliances Can Transform Your Travel Experience

Knowing airline alliances is essential. The three major US airlines (Delta, United, and American) are all in different alliances. They partner by sharing route responsibilities, customer relations, and resources. Sometimes, there is the potential to get the same flight for fewer points when booking through a partner airline. Who doesn’t want to get more for less?

United and American Airlines websites make searching for award availability through their alliance partners easy by letting you search by week or month. Starting on either of these sites is a great way to get a snapshot of available award flights within their alliance. *Pro-Tip: Always search for one-way flights and combine them into roundtrip flights.

There are some limitations, but this is a great way to learn how to search for awards. Here is an example search with American Airlines. The steps will be similar on United’s page. *Pro-Tip: You must be part of their loyalty program to search for award availability on most airline websites. Don’t worry; they’re all free to sign up.

The example we’re searching is Los Angeles (LAX) to Hong Kong (HKG) on November 3, 2023. When searching, make sure to click Redeem miles and One-way.

As you can see, no award flights are available, but here is where we can click the calendar to look at a monthly snapshot of available award flights.

On the calendar search page, you can choose the number of stops you prefer and the class you want to search. For example, we will continue with nonstop only and economy class.

Here is where flexibility can pay off. We changed our flight search to November 5, 2023, because of the availability. This flight is flown with Cathay Pacific but booked through American Airlines. 

We now know this flight with Cathay Pacific is a saver award because airlines only share saver awards with their alliance partners. *Pro-Tip: All airlines only have a couple of saver award tickets in First/Business class and a couple in economy per flight. 

Knowing this, we can now check all other alliance partners depending on what transfer points we want to use. See the Alliance drop downs for guidance. 

Because there is a limited number of saver award tickets on each flight, it may be difficult to find availability in a typical travel booking timeframe. You'll increase your odds of finding availability if you plan on traveling within 15 days. If you’re like me and don’t have that kind of flexibility, try to book 300 days out or more. 

If you have questions or would like help booking through Alliance partners and don’t want to do the work. Contact us about our Concierge Services; we can do it for you.