Frequent Miler on the Air - Best miles for each airline alliance | Coffee Break Ep100 | 4-7-26

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

Airlines partner up into alliances (oneworld, Star Alliance, and Sky Team), which usually means you can use the miles from one program to book with one of its partners. We'll talk about the best programs within each alliance. Coffee Break: Best miles for each airline alliance(01:12) - Star Alliance(01:24) - United MileagePlus pros and cons(03:28) - Air Canada Aeroplan pros and cons(06:54) - Avianca LifeMiles pros and cons(11:36) - oneworld(11:44) - American Airlines AAdvantage pros and cons(14:08) - Alaska Atmos pros and cons(17:07) - Sky Team(17:20) - Delta SkyMiles pros and cons(19:52) - Air France/KLM Flying Blue pros and cons(22:22) - Virgin Atlantic Flying Club pros and consVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn HeadsMentioned in this episode:Visit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast Network

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Freakomilers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. Today's coffee break, the best miles for each airline alliance. So, you know, airlines partner up into these alliances. There's Star Alliance, One World, and Sky Team. And in general, if you have miles from one airline that's in an alliance,

you can usually use those miles to book flights on not just that same airline, but also other airlines in the same alliance. But not all miles are created equal. So we're going to look at several types of miles from each alliance. And in each case, there's at least one. transferable points currency that can transfer to those miles that we're going to talk about, often more than one. And we're going to, you know, basically discuss which is best if you want to book flights within that alliance. Yeah, and this is kind of going to be a hot take. We're not

going to dive into all of the aspects of each program, but let's take a look at several of the aspects. And let's start out with Star Alliance. So with Star Alliance, first up, we've got United. United, of course, is a Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner and a built transfer partner. So you have a couple of ways to gather United Miles. So what are some of the pros of United Mileage Plus? Yeah. So United has no award change or cancellation fees, which I think is great. No partner booking fees or surcharges.

They have, even though they don't have a published award chart anymore, they do have zone-based pricing. So, for example, if you're flying to Europe, you know, you're generally going to get the same price, whether you're flying to, you know, from the U.S. to Western Europe or to Eastern Europe. Now, I'm saying generally because they actually do vary prices based on which partner you're flying. So that might change the fee, but the distance isn't going to change it. It's often the only option if you want to fly United itself. United is not good at releasing award space to partners. So if you want to fly United, you might need United Miles. And they've recently introduced better cardholder award availability and award pricing.

So if you have a United Credit Card, then you can get better deals with their miles. Of course, that could be a con too if you don't have a United Credit Card. So those are some advantages to United Miles. Probably the biggest disadvantage is that United often charges more for awards than some of the competing miles we're going to talk about. That's usually true when booking partners. When booking United itself, as I said before, you probably wouldn't even be able to book from the partner miles. So therefore United has better pricing. But it's also not universally true.

For example, like when I've looked at, for example, flying U.S. to the Middle East using United Miles seems like it's often a better deal than partner airline than other airline miles. There you go. All right. So there's United is the first of three star alliance picks that we're going to discuss quickly here. So Air Canada Aeroplane is one of my favorites. Air Canada Aeroplane, of course, partners with numerous transferable currencies. So you've got lots of ways to earn Air Canada Aeroplane points. And some of the pros, some of the advantages are that they have many, many partners extending well beyond the Star Alliance.

So you've got all the Star Alliance Airlines, plus, I mean, I think in total there's something over 40 different partners. And Star Alliance, I think, is fewer than 30 of those. So Air Canada Aeroplane has lots of partners, no surcharges on awards apart from their partner booking fee. They've got a partner booking fee that's less than $30,000. And they do charge some tax recovery surcharge that you don't get if you're booking via some other Star Alliance carriers. So, for instance, if you're booking a United Award to Canada or Mexico, it does cost a little bit more in taxes. But overall, no, none of the many carriers label as fuel surcharges or carrier-imposed surcharges, none of that. You get a stop over on a one-way award for 5,000 additional miles.

That can be a terrific value, particularly because they allow for really complicated routing. So you can really kind of go out of your way a good bit in order to get to your stopover point and then continue on from there. So it makes it possible to put together some really creative stuff. I think that's largely because the program was designed by and for people who are really into miles and points. So if you really like complicated stuff, Air Canada Aeroplane is going to be really the only choice, I think, in a lot of ways for super, maybe not the only, but one of the few for super complicated itineraries. And they do still have a published award chart, which is a major strength as compared to some of the U.S.-based airlines. So you know what you're going to get, so to speak. You can look at their award charts and figure out what an award should cost.

Although, when we look at the cons, one of the cons, I guess that I should mention in tandem with the published award chart, is that they now have multiple award charts. Not all partners are priced by the standard award chart. They have different charts for Emirates and for United and some of the other. other partners now. And that is a major, I think a major detraction for them. You've got the fact that the price increases based on distance. And so for instance, if you're based on the West Coast, using Air Canada Aeroplane to get to Europe is not going to be a terrific value. Though if you're based on the East Coast, it is a really good value. So it can vary a little bit based on where you

are and where you're going. Phone support can be really slow. The times I've had to call Air Canada Aeroplan. I've often had to wait hours to reach an agent, and that can be frustrating. And the cheapest awards cost a lot to cancel and to change, well, a little bit less to change. So they're kind of expensive to cancel the cheapest awards. Of course, you can book a flexible award, and it still in many cases will cost, I think, fewer miles than what United charges. However, if you book the lowest awards, the cancellation fee is kind of high. The change fee, though, is more reasonable. So the trick here is to just change your your flight to a fully flexible flight of some sort could be just about anything. It doesn't have to be

the same type of award. You could book an entirely different region, find a much cheaper flexible flight, and you'll get a refund of the difference in miles, and then you can cancel for free. So you'll still pay something to change, but it's a cheaper way around that particular con. And then finally, for Star Alliance, we've got Avianca Life Miles. What does there say about Avianca. Well, you know, I'll do a quick overview of this, but I want Nick to jump in because he has a lot more experience with Avianca than I do. Amianka definitely has some excellent award pricing, which seems to vary by route. They have sort of fixed-ish zone pricing, but randomly charge less for different routes within those own awards.

mixed cabin pricing can make for some really good deals. And what that means is if you've booked a combination of business class and economy, most airline miles will charge you the full flight, as if it was all in business, even though half your flight was an economy, half your trip. But Avianca doesn't do that. What they do is they average the two. And in some situations that can make for fantastic deals. You can get a life miles plus subscription that would allow free changes and cancellations plus 10% off your awards.

So there's some really good opportunities there to make. It sort of makes your miles more valuable by doing that subscription. Yeah. You can get some great deals to Europe, sometimes under 50,000 miles one way with business class on the long haul flight, thanks to a combination of that 10% discount and the mixed cabin pricing. Some cons. So prices have increased. They used to be pretty dependably cheaper than other options, but that's no longer necessarily true. They do impose a $25 partner booking fee. One really big con is that when you're doing award searches and they show you the price, not all the fees and surcharges are shown up front. And so you don't see the full price, the cash part of the price, until you get. to the final checkout screen, which you can't get to unless you have at least 40% of the required miles. So what often happens to people is they transfer in the miles that they need and only to discover that the actual cash portion of the price is much higher than they expect it. And that can be

really frustrating. Speaking of frustrating, the website is really frustrating. You have to do crazy things like change what airline or group of airlines you're searching in order to get awards to show. Otherwise, it might just show you that there's no awards available for what you're looking at. And then phone support can be dicey. More recently, we've had some good success, though. Yeah, I've had some good experiences with that lately, but they're not well regarded in general. Yeah, that whole glitch with the taxes and fees not showing correctly. it depends on the routing that you're looking at.

In some cases, you'll see the correct amount of taxes and fees and the search results. But in other cases, particularly when you're mixing different airline partners, it often does not show the accurate total until you reach checkout. So what I always tell people is look up the award on Air Canada Aeroplane or on United. And whatever they're charging in taxes and fees, Avianca is going to be pretty close. It'll be pretty close to Air Canada Aeroplane because both programs have a partner booking fee. If you compare against United, Avianca is going to cost about 25. dollars more per passenger because of their partner booking fee. But the taxes, you're going to pay

through whatever program you book. So it's not like Avianca's going to charge you more than other programs would. They're going to charge you the same taxes plus the $25 booking fee. It's just sometimes it looks like that they're going to charge you less in taxes. And it's obviously not possible, but it's not intuitive either. No. All right. We've got to move on. But really quick, in one sentence, what is your favorite Star Alliance Miles and why? I'm going to go with Avianca Life Miles. I think it's really improved. And so, and I think there's so many good deals to be had that I think Avianca Life Miles is worth

the potential for frustration, as long as you're willing to deal with a little bit of complication. That was a run on sentence. And I'm going to go to the one that Nick would not pick, which is United. And the main reason is because if you're U.S.-based, you're going to want to fly United itself. And it's the only way. And if you just tack on a credit card, you can sometimes get.

really decent deals for long haul, like, you know, business class, United Flights, and you can't do that with the other programs. So anyway, free awards and cancellation and changes are important to me too there. But moving on, let's talk about one world. I'll talk about American Airlines, and then Nick will talk about Alaska Atmos. So American Airlines, some pros to American miles is that Americans still has partner award charts. So they don't have war charts for their own flights anymore, but for partners, they do in their zone base. So kind of like what I was saying before with United, that if you're flying further but still

within the same zones, the price isn't going to change. And some of that partner award pricing is really good. You can count on, especially like business class, international awards on partners to be really, really good prices. American still offers free changes and cancellations, which is fantastic. And booking American Airlines itself can be a good deal, even when SAVER awards aren't available. Now, a lot of people will say, but wait a minute, when I log on and try to book an American Airlines award, you know, flying American with American miles. It's like 200,000 miles to go 12 feet. True.

But if you wait 10 minutes and try again, you might get a different price. And we've referred to this as like spinning the roulette wheel, the advantage roulette wheel. You never know what you're going to get. And so when I want to fly in American Airlines flight, I set alerts both to see whether it'll open up to other partner miles, but also whether AA itself will drop the price, and the price booking on AA itself does change regularly. And so you can often get a good deal that way. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Miler on the air podcast.

Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At Frequentmiler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best best credit cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. Very good.

Yeah, as far as cons go, American has some unpublished routing rules that can make it impossible to fly certain international routes that seem logical, but you just won't be able to get them to price. it at all. And that can be frustrating. When you see that there's award availability on the individual legs and you want to book it with American miles and it just can't be done, that's for longer haul. So one example we wrote here is booking U.S. to Australia flying through Asia. You're not going to

book that. Yeah. So sometimes that can be frustrating. And of course, the lack of the ability to add a stopover is somewhat of a bummer. There are times where that would really be nice. But of course, if you want that in one world, then you have Alaska Atmos. So Alaska Atmos is probably the next best one world program. They have solid award pricing in many cases. Now, that's changed a bit. So if you're West Coast-based, don't yell at me too loudly through the screen or the headphones. There are situations, obviously, where prices did go up when they launched the new Atmos program.

However, overall, I feel like the Atmos program is really strong, particularly so for people that are based on the East Coast. I think pricing of Europe is great. You get a free stopover on a one way, and so, as I was saying, that's a great deal, and oftentimes enables you to visit two places for the price of one. You can earn status through award flights. So you can be booking award flights with your miles and earning credit towards elite status. That's awesome. They have lots of partners beyond just one world, not as many as Air Canada Eraplan,

but a fair number of partners that stretch beyond one world. And you can sometimes book partner awards. for more miles, even when saver awards aren't available. Now, on the one hand, you might say, well, why do I want to spend so many miles for a partner award? I really want the saver awards, and we all want the saver awards. But there are times when you just really have to get somewhere, and so the ability to be able to book a partner award, even when saver awards aren't available, can be a nice, handy addition in the right situations. On the con side, we've got the non-refundable $12.50.50 partner booking fee. So they have a partner

booking fee, sort of like some other airlines that we mentioned, but it's completely non-refundable here, unless, well, let me take that back. It's completely non-refundable for most members. So if you book an award and later decide you need to cancel, you won't get that $12.50 back. However, if you've got the Alaska Summit card from Bank of America, you don't pay that fee. So then that's not a concern. So there is a way around that one. The price, of course, increases with distance. So when you're farther away, again, West Coast of Europe is going to be much more expensive than East Coast to Europe. and mixed partner awards are not yet available in most cases. And that is perhaps one of the biggest point of frustration with Alaska Atmos at this point.

And the reason why I couldn't pick them is the one world partner because there are so many great awards, it would be great if you could book, but you cannot yet book them. So, Greg, what's your pick? Yeah, it's really close for me because both have some great features. But I'm going to give American Airlines the edge. Yeah, I agree. I give them the edge because of the lack of ability for. mixed partner awards. Once Alaska enables that, though, Alaska might become my pick.

It may be, yeah. On the other hand, you know, I keep finding situations on, like, long-haul flights. I flew to Australia. American Airlines was like the best option for business class flights and they were never-saver awards available, but I could book for a reasonable number of American Airlines

miles by playing that advantage roulette game, basically. You know, there's no easy answer. I could also give great examples where Alaska was better. So it just depends. All right. So let's move on to Sky Team. We've got three contenders here, right? We've got Delta, Air France, KLM Flying Blue is the second one, and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. So I'll talk about Delta here. So Delta does have some pros. There are free changes and cancellations. Supposedly, it's only free if you,

originate in North America, but I've heard from people that they were able to change and cancel for free anyway. So I don't know if that's actually a thing. There's decent pricing on partners when awards are not touching the United States. So for example, if you want a book from Asia to Australia and you can find award availability on one of Delta's partners, you might get decent pricing for with your sky miles that way. Delta charges ridiculous amounts for their own flights compared to what you might be able to get with partner miles. Another pro is that card holders almost always get at least around 1.2 to 1.3 cents per point on Delta's own flights.

So that is not an eye-popping number as far as like how. much value you're getting. But when you look at competitors, United American, or Canada, when you're booking their miles, their own flights with their own miles, especially like domestically, often you're getting really bad value from those miles. Like when saver awards aren't available, you're usually often getting less than a penny per point. So the fact that Delta kind of fixes it around that 1.2 level. especially for card holders, I mean, is better. You like Alaska, you can earn elite status from award flight.

So the reason we don't talk about that a lot is because how infrequently awards are a good deal. So we don't concentrate on that. But if you are booking a lot of awards with Delta Miles, that can be great for you. A big con, of course, I already mentioned, outsized value from your miles is just extremely rare. It's almost like a cash-based system these days. But they do have occasional flash sales where you can get really good value from your Delta miles. Unfortunately, they don't do a good job of publishing these. So you kind of just have to get lucky and find them when they're available.

Yeah, yeah. All right. Next up, we've got Air France, KLM Flying Blue. Some of the pros. They have decent award pricing on their own flights, their own awards. So that can be a real strength, especially at times. they'll have even maybe not safer awards available, but still reasonably priced awards. That varies, though, of course, based on when you're searching.

They have some good partner award deals, particularly short-distance Delta flights can be a good deal using Air France-KLM at times. And the program seems to be committed to remaining interesting. And when I say that, I mean that the people at the top of the program are pretty attuned to miles and points. And like Air Canada Aeroplane, they seem to be interested in. making their program relevant. And I think that's important and notable because not all programs necessarily are concerned with that. I think that to me is an indication that we'll still see good opportunities even as the program changes over time. But, oh, and I'm sorry, and there also is the ability to add a free stopover on an award now. And so that's a major pro going for Air France,

KLM, Flying Blue. However, you have to call in order to do it. And that never seems like as much fun as being able to do it online. So that's perhaps a con, although I'm kind of interested now. T-Mobile's doing a beta that I got into where I can call in a number of different languages, and supposedly it will live translate on the phone. I haven't tested it out yet, but it'll live translate on the phone. Now I know I can speak to an English-speaking agent, but I'm kind of curious now to call a program like Air France in French and see if I'm able to do that with T-Mobile. I would love to see what happens to make a major award booking, depending on the AI. The live translate correctly.

Who knows what you're going to get? I'll be curious. I'll be curious to see what I get. So one of these days, I'm going to try that out. But the cons are that they've recently increased award surcharges. And I mean, I guess along with that, the other major con is that award surcharges tend to be a little high when you're booking via Air France, Kail, and I'm flying blue in the first place. and now they've increased them on their own flights. So if you're flying from the U.S. to Europe, for instance, whereas it used to be about $250 in taxes and fees.

Now it's about $350 in taxes and fees in business class. But all that said about Air France, KLA and Flying Blue, actually I think I might prefer. The next one we're going to talk about Virgin Atlantic Flying Club for Sky Team. All right. Let's take a look. So Virgin Atlantic has some pros. They have some incredible deals on their own metal, meaning if you're flying Virgin Atlantic itself. Economy awards like New York to London start at like 6,000 miles, business class

at like 29,000. When I say start at, prices vary. So you just have to look and see what the prices are and sometimes you'll get that low. There is sometimes better award pricing for when you want to fly Air France or KLM, like to Europe, for example. They have decent short distance pricing for flying Delta itself, although Air France recently has gotten even better for that. So that's not as big of a pro as it used to be. Where their pricing is really good is short distance flights within Europe are fantastic. So if you want to fly Air France, KLM around Europe, Virgin Atlantic is the way to go. Like Alaska and Delta, you can earn status credit from award flights, although I think with Virgin,

it's limited to their own flights, whereas the other two allow even partner flights. There are frequent transfer bonuses to Virgin. This is true of Air France, too, I think. So you can get a lot more miles from your transferable points in order to book awards. So those are all really good things. Some cons surcharges can be really high. So on their own flights, it can be absurd. So, you know, when booking economy, it's not usually not so bad, but when you want to book a premium cabin, you might be looking at like hundreds or over $1,000 one way.

And so it can be prohibitive. Things get even worse if you're trying to book Delta long distance with Virgin as far as those surcharges go. Absolutely insane amounts of cash co-pays for those. Another big problem with Virgin is they will change their program overnight with no warning. And usually that's in terms of devaluing the program. And you'd like to know that your points have some value long term. And you would at least know in advance when things are changing. Virgin has often made those changes without warning.

Yeah, that's really the main hang up for me is that I just never know when they're going to change and I know that I won't know until somebody just happens to figure it out because they're not going to let us know when they've made a negative change for the most part. So that's a huge bummer, I think. But out of these three, out of, you know, Delta Air France and Virgin Atlantic, what's your pick for Best Sky Team partner, Best Sky Team program? Yeah. For me, I'm with Air France, Kail on Flying Blue. I think they have.

So none of these three are ideal. They all have some pretty significant problems when you compare to what's available. in other alliances. But I think it has sort of the best most rounded program for booking awards. I think that's a strong pick. And until the recent increase in surcharges, I may have gone that route as well. I think I'm going to hesitantly and under duress pick Virgin Atlantic Flying Club because of the fact that they do have, I think, some more partner sweet spot options than what I've

seen from Air France, KLM, Flying Blue, and what is next. lower surcharges even on the Air France, KLM Flying Blue Awards. You can pay fewer miles and less than surcharges via Virgin Atlantic. So in the moment, I would pick Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, but with the caveat that that could change tomorrow. So it's a hard pick. All right. There you go.

As you saw, we don't always agree on which is best. So there's no single right answer. But that gives you an overview of the programs available to all three lines. Don't forget. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media, and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. If you love travel but don't always have time to plan, we've got a podcast for you. It's called Travel in 10 and in every episode, in about 10 minutes, we give you a smart, practical overview of destinations all around the world. We cover what to see, where to stay, where to eat, what actually matters when you're planning out a trip. It's designed for real life. Listen on the way.

to the airport, in the car, or while you're thinking about your next getaway. So if you want expert advice, zero fluff, and travel inspiration that you can actually use, search for travel and tin wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can also find us at voyagecape.com. Hi, I'm Mike Siegel, host of the Travel Tales podcast, and I'm a stand-up comedian who's been touring the world for years, and when I'm not traveling for work, I'm traveling for fun. And when I'm not traveling at all, I'm talking with friends, influencers, expats, and other people from all walks of life about the thing I'm not. most passionate about travel. So if you want to hear a fun conversation about travel and maybe even

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