What Airline Alliance is Best – Star Alliance vs. Skyteam vs. Oneworld

Many of you are probably wondering: what airline alliance is best for me to be loyal to. Star Alliance, Skyteam, or Oneworld? Well, as it is for most subjective things: there is no straight answer. It depends on what you want from the alliance. First of all, what even are these airline alliances?

What Are Airline Alliances?

As airlines grow, they often find that to get people to different places in the world, especially areas in which that airline does not serve, they need partners. Partners in which one can book on one airline, and fly on another. While airlines often have individual partners, a way to simplify relationships between airlines, the airline alliance exists. Basically, how it works is that for most (only a couple exceptions) airlines within an alliance, you can be booked on one airline and fly on another. This greatly expands an airline’s route network, and brings it to a world wide level, so you can fly to most places in the world with one alliance. The three large major alliances are: Star Alliance (first alliance, home to United Airlines), Skyteam (Delta Airlines), and Oneworld (American Airlines) For a list of some of the smaller alliances, see my aviation vocabulary and airline profile formatting page here. Well, so which one is the best alliance? Keep reading to find out.

What Alliance For You? First, the Easy Decisions

Some of the time, it can depend only on where you live and what airlines fly into your home airport. For example, if you lived in Toronto where Air Canada is the prominent airline, you will most likely be a Star Alliance loyalist as Air Canada flies to by far the most destinations from there. If you lived in Paris, you will also most likely be loyal to Skyteam, as Air France flies to the most destinations out of Paris of any airline. If you lived in Charlotte, you will most likely be an American Airlines loyalist, and therefore, be a Oneworld loyalist. You sometimes might not even be loyal to one alliance. For example, if you lived in Dubai, you probably won’t be 100% loyal to any specific alliance, as Emirates does not belong to any airline alliance. However, in the rest of the article, I will focus on the people who have a choice between which alliance to be loyal to. So what is the best airline alliance? Short answer: it depends.

Member Airlines of Each Alliance

* Founding Member

Note: Canadian Airways was a founder of Oneworld, but has since been bought by Air Canada

As you can see, Star Alliance has many more airlines than both Skyteam and Oneworld, and has member airlines based in almost twice as many countries as Skyteam and Oneworld. If you aren’t sure what alliance to pick, and you want as many airlines spread out throughout the world as possible for you to choose from, choose to become loyal to Star Alliance over any of the other alliances. See below a table for the number of airlines in each area from each alliance.

As you can see, some alliances have a larger focus in some areas of the world than others. For example, Star Alliance dominates Europe and Africa, while Oneworld dominates South America, while all 3 alliances have their fair share of airlines in Asia. However this table is only useful if you travel to one of these areas a lot, and then one of these alliances is more practical than another. However, the last two tables have just shown where specific alliances are from. To fully compare alliances, I will also compare the quality of the airlines in each alliance.

Skytrax Ratings of Each Alliance

I know Skytrax ratings are far from perfect, but lets start there to see how good the airlines from each alliance are. See below for the averages of the airlines from each alliance.

Star Alliance: 4.2 Stars (including 5 out of the top 10)

Skyteam: 4.3 (1 out of top 10)

Oneworld: 4.2 (2 out of top 10)

As you can see, all alliances have an average rating of about a bit more than a 4. However, Star Alliance has a lot more highly rated airlines than the other alliances. But they also have a lot more airlines than the other alliances. So, what comes out of this is that all the airlines in each alliance are rated similarly. So, basically, I won’t choose an alliance based on the quality of airlines, because the airlines are rated similar from each alliance. So, what did Skytrax rate each airline from the three airline alliances?

1. 1. Star Alliance
2. 2. Oneworld
3. 3. Skyteam

Best Alliance For You

I generally find it hard to judge alliances, because each of them has good airlines, and they all have bad airlines. However, I would say that Star Alliance is the best alliance by a tiny margin because it has the most airlines in it, and it has a ton of fantastic airlines (Singapore, ANA, EVA Air). So I am going to write a list of rules to decide what alliance is best for you below, because there is not a clear overall best alliance (in my opinion), just the best alliance for YOU.

1. 1. If you live in a city dominated by one airline, fly them and be loyal to that alliance. Why? Because you can fly to the most places directly from there on that airline. It only makes sense to be loyal to the alliance which has the airline you fly the most in it.
2. 2. If the city you live in is dominated by multiple airlines in multiple alliances, see which one flies to more destinations that you would fly to, and be loyal to that airline and the alliance it belongs to. 
3. 3. If you fly two or three airlines in two or three different alliances, be loyal to all of them: there is no harm in being loyal to more than one airline! I even recommend everyone to have frequent flyer accounts in all three alliances, so you can earn miles on pretty much every flight you take.
4. 4. If you need to be loyal to one alliance and you can’t decide in any other way, choose Star Alliance. They have the most airlines in it so you will be able to go to the most places in the world with them.

Conclusion

There is no clear option for what the best airline alliance is. There is only the best alliance for you. If I had to choose one alliance, I would choose Star Alliance, simply because they have the most airlines in it. While there is no best alliance in general, there is most often always going to be a best airline alliance for you.

Which airline alliance do you prefer?