All About Star Alliance

An airline alliance is an agreement between two or more airlines (passenger and cargo) to cooperate on a substantial level that provides a network of connectivity and convenience for international passengers and packages.

These alliances also provide marketing branding to assist travelers making inter-airline code share (sharing in this sense means that each airline publishes and markets the flight under its own airline and flight number as part of its published time schedule) connections within countries associated under the alliance. There are three major alliances: Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam. Today's blog post will feature Star Alliance, the world's largest and most successful of the three.

Star Alliance, launched in 1997 and still going strong, is headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and currently has 27 full members, 39 affiliates, and 2 airlines pending memberships as of early 2015. On top of these members, there are many affiliated airlines of the affiliates (confusing, we know!), and airports which act as Star Alliance hubs. Flying with a Star Alliance airline has many benefits—one can book and manage flight information straight through the Star Alliance site, and as an individual flying with a member airline, you are also able to easily rack up flying miles, even if you only fly every so often. When it comes to upgrading flying class or general flying comfort, usually one has to rack up miles with one airline--when it comes to Star Alliance, however, miles can be tracked through a special Star Alliance card--and those miles you save up can be used on any flight to any destination as long as it's under Star Alliance!

"Upgrade" benefits include Star Alliance-only lounges in airports (a few of us here at CapLug have relaxed in a SA-lounge, and we can definitely tell you they're preeeeeetty snazzy!), reduced flight rates, class/flight upgrades, and general booking ease--remember, because SA airlines are all connected, changing airlines last minute or hopping from one to the other (as long as it's in SA!) makes long-term traveling so much easier.

As of early 2015, the following are the airlines under Star Alliance:

• Adria Airways
• Aegean Airways
• Air Canada
• Air India
• Air New Zealand
• All Nippon Airways (ANA)
• Asiana Airlines
• Austrian Airlines
• Avianca
• Brussels Airlines
• Copa Airlines
• Croatia Airlines
• EgyptAir
• Ethiopian Airlines
• EVA Airlines
• LOT Polish Airlines
• Lufthansa
• Scandinavian Airlines
• Shenzhen Airlines
• Singapore Airlines
• South African Airways
• Swiss International Air Lines
• TAP Portugal
• Thai Airways International
• Turkish Airlines
• United Airlines

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