Last week, I wrote a quick intro on understanding airline alliances with a breakdown of the Star Alliance. Now it’s time to dive into the next one. Let’s talk OneWorld!
One World Alliance
While the OneWorld alliance isn’t as large as the Star Alliance, there are still a heck of a lot of great options for redeeming your miles for flights all over the world.
The OneWorld alliance members from their website are:
airberlin
American Airlines
British Airways
Cathay Pacific
Finnair
Iberia
Japan Airlines
LAN
TAM
Malaysia Airlines
Qantas
Qatar Airways
Royal Jordanian
S7 Airlines
SriLankan Airlines
oneworld airline affiliates
Mexicana
There are some sexy options there! My favorite OneWorld airline is Cathay Pacific, which has a great business class and first class product. Jordan and I will be flying Cathay in September from LAX to HKG. Can’t wait.
Cathay Pacific First Class
Easiest airlines to earn OneWorld miles with
Before you can book amazing travel on a OneWorld airline, you need miles in one of the airline loyalty programs in the alliance. Once you have miles in one program, you can book any airline in that alliance! Below are some of the easiest airlines to earn miles with through credit card bonuses and spending.
American Airlines is by far the easiest OneWorld airline to earn miles in. And American Airlines has a great award chart. You can book a one-way “MileSAAver” ticket in business class to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific for 55,000 AAdvantage miles, or 67,500 for first class and only $2.50 in taxes. Here’s a link to their full award chart.
There are several rewards credit cards that allow you to earn AAdvantage miles. Citibank issues the World Elite card that comes with a bonus of 60,000 miles, but there’s a hefty annual fee of $450. You do get perks, like lounge access, first checked bag free, and $100 in statement credits, but this card had a bonus of 100,000 earlier in the year, so I would wait for it to increase again. There are also 50,000 miles offers on the personal and business Citibank Platinum World Mastercards.
US Airways, which is merging with American Airlines, is also a good option for earning OneWorld miles. Eventually, they will be fully merged (probably by end of next year), but until then, you can redeem your US Airways miles through their award chart. And eventually (hopefully sooner than later) we will be able to combine our US Airways Dividend and American Airlines AAdvantage miles. Oh, how I long for that day.
You could fly the same first class flight on Cathay Pacific with US Airways miles for 120,000 round-trip. That’s cheaper than booking with AA miles, and only 10k more miles than the flight would cost you in business class with Dividend miles. All award booking prices with Dividend miles price as a round-trip, so don’t book any one-ways! You can see the US Airways Partner award chart here.
Barclays has a US Airways co-branded card that comes with a sign-up bonus of 40,000 miles on FIRST SPEND. Yep, that means no minimum spend requirement to meet. Don’t see that too often anymore! Once the merger is complete, you won’t be able to apply for this card, so now might be a good time to apply if you’ve had your eye on this one. See this link for all the info: The US Airways® Premier World MasterCard®
British Airways is another OneWorld partner that you have plenty of options to earn miles with. But you’ll need to be strategic with British Airways Avios miles, since it usually doesn’t make sense to book long-haul flights with British Airways because of their hefty fuel surcharges. But there are some gems, like flying air berlin, Aer Lingus, and Iberia, that make Avios worth having. See my post on how to maximize British Airways Avios for examples.
loving it on Iberia
Because British Airways has a distance-based award chart, I prefer to use my British Airways Avios for short haul international and domestic flights. For example, it only cost us 4,500 Avios and $22 to fly from Dublin to London last year. And for a flight from DFW to ORD, it’s only 7,500 miles and $5.
Avios are eeeeasy to accumulate. Almost too easy. First, there’s the Chase co-branded British Airways Visa Signature® Card that comes with 50,000 Avios after you spend $2,000 in 3 months.
British Airways is also a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards, and Chase’s Ultimate Rewards program. So any card that earns Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards points is basically earning you Avios, if you desire.
It’s also worth noting that Starwood points transfer out to the three airlines mentioned above, and more. You will receive a 5,000 points bonus for every 20,000 that you transfer out. But you should wait until there’s a 30,000 points SPG offer to apply for one of their cards.
How to search and book OneWorld flights
Ok, so earning miles and points can be the easy part. Searching for flights, on the other hand, is work. I like the challenge of award booking, but I may be a little nuts. A couple tips to keep in mind when you’re searching for an award:
Search segment by segment, starting with the longest leg first.
Write down your flight numbers, so you can spoon feed them to the rep with the airline you actually have miles in.
If you get a rep that won’t work with you, politely hang up and call back.
Always ask politely for them to waive the over-the-phone booking fee – you might be surprised.
If you’re unable to book a partner flight through the website you’re redeeming miles with, then you will have to call into the airline and book your award. For example, you can’t book Cathay Pacific flights on the American Airlines website, so you would search for CX (Cathay Pacific) availability on the British Airways website, then call American once you find the award space you want.
Alright, here are the best sites to search for OneWorld award space.
Qantas
You must be a member of Qantas to search for award flights on their site. I like searching for flights on Qantas because they have a month long calendar you can look at, but they do show some phantom award space, so be careful.
Qantas Monthly Award Calendar
You can use the Qantas site to search British Airways, Cathay Pacific, air berlin, American Airlines, Finnair, Iberia, and LAN.
British Airways
The British Airways site is my go-to site when searching for Cathay Pacific award flights. It can be buggy (very buggy at times), but I do think it’s getting better and it recently received a face lift.
British Airways Cathay Pacific
You can search Royal Jordanian, Cathay Pacific, Iberia, US Airways, and American Airlines through the British Airways website.
American Airlines
The American Airlines website is the easiest OneWorld search engine to use, and it’s also the prettiest. Just look at all the colors.
American Airlines OneWorld
The American Airlines site is good for searching Qantas, Alaska Airlines (non OneWorld member), British Airways, air berlin, and Hawaiian Airlines (non OneWorld member).
It’s also worth noting that the Japan Airlines website is a good tool for searching OneWorld award flights, but it can be difficult to navigate.
Check out my more in depth review of each of these OneWorld booking options.
Conclusion
Whether you want to fly to Chicago, Hawaii, Europe, Asia, or Australia, the OneWorld alliance has you covered. And it’s pretty darn easy to earn miles and points in OneWorld alliance airlines. So what’s stopping you from traveling? Do it!
I hope this helps if you’re about to navigate the OneWorld award waters!
(Disclaimer: I receive a referral credit for some of the cards mentioned in this post. Thanks for the support if you ever apply through the blog!)
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— Geoff Whitmore