Redeeming Your Points (Part 2): Partner and Alliance Networks

In Part 1 of my Redeeming Your Points post, I talked about putting your points to use and how straightforward it can be to redeem them (some more so than others, of course). But here's an important thing to know when you want to redeem your miles: you're not limited strictly to that airline.

Let's say you have racked up an envious amount of Avios points (the reward points for British Airways) and you want to fly from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. It doesn't mean you HAVE to fly British Airways (BA). If you were to fly strictly BA, you would first have to fly east to London before continuing onto Hong Kong. Two precious days of your vacation time will be devoted completely to traveling—one way.

But luckily for all of us, most airlines aren't this guy:

Learn more about Partner and Alliance networks and how it's getting easier to use them after the jump.
Most major airlines belong to a Partner or Alliance Network. The big three are:

• oneworld – Includes (but not limited to) American Airlines, British Airways, Iberia and Cathay Pacific
• SkyTeam – Includes (but not limited to) Delta, Korean Air, Air France and China Airlines
• Star Alliance – Includes (but not limited to) United Airlines, US Airways, Air China and Lufthansa

Going back to our example of using Avios points to travel from Los Angeles to Hong Kong, you can simply use BA's redemption page to book the trip and you'll see this page:

Click to zoom!

1. Fly only with BA. A significant portion of your vacation would be spent on an airplane seat, breathing recirculated cabin air. (Marginally worse than breathing Hong Kong smog.)
2. Fly with partners, American Airlines/Cathay Pacific or Japan Airlines.

As you can see, just because you earn points from a certain airline, you're not restricted to only flying that airline. You have quite a few options with partner airlines and alliance networks. So go forth and keep earning your miles! Just be sure to know which alliance network your points can be used in.

There is one slight catch... not all partners will show up in your search. Details of that will come in the epic conclusion of this trilogy of posts.