Airline Alliance Smackdown - Oneworld Versus Star Alliance

Because I fly out of Phoenix Sky Harbor, I've collected the majority of my air miles on US Airways. I've also scooped up decent amounts from Continental and American. All of these are members of either oneworld or Star Alliance - you know, those associations of various airlines that seem to have no real benefit aside from making it easier to collect air miles.

I thought it might be interesting to see how their Web sites do at picking decent routes to cool places. My predictions were that oneworld airlines would add significant times since AA hubs are at Chicago and Dallas. I tested both Web sites using destinations such as Tokyo Narita, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Reykjavik, Auckland, Sydney, Lima, Honolulu and Hanoi. Let's check out how they scored!

oneworld
At the oneworld Web site, a pop-up window appears with your results. And it seems to work really quickly. There's a drop-down menu for dates, which is really nice. The fonts are a bit small, but that's not too big a quibble. It also lacks an autocomplete for city and airport names. That's a bummer for when you're not certain of the city, just the country or state.

But let's talk about getting a traveler from the fifth most-populous city in the United States to some fun destinations. Let's start with Honolulu, Hawaii. Oneworld can't get me from Phoenix to Honolulu on Feb. 17, nor back on the 27th? Some people should be hanging their heads over this farce. Of course oneworld airlines go to Honolulu. Problem is, Phoenix isn't a hub, and it's barely even a spoke on their systems. Oneworld also shut me out of Buenos Aires and Reykjavik. Getting me to Lima was also a joke and a perfect indictment of the hub-and-spoke system. I mean, seriously - flying to LaGuardia before heading to South America? Miami makes a little more sense, but really. And going to Sydney? The oneworld Web site wants to send me to 2 hours east to Dallas, 3 hours west to Los Angeles, and THEN to Sydney. This is where Southwest Airlines earns its stripes.

Star Alliance
Star Alliance has a somewhat weird site. First off, you actually have to use a "www" in the URL if you're typing the address. Then you land at a homepage that looks more like it belongs to a human resources company than a global airline alliance. Oneworld offers an easy-to-see link that says "Flight Search." Here, that function is buried in the "Booking" pulldown. From there, things continue to be uneven: The search fields are pretty nice, actually - there's a great autocomplete for cities and airports, but the date field is clunky. But the search field's default mode is for a one-way flight, which is a bit silly. Adding to the technical woes, sometimes I couldn't change the destination. I worked around it by clicking the "one-way" box and switching back to "round trip." But you shouldn't require that sort of trickery for a basic function.

But once the Star Alliance search engine spooled its hamster up to full speed, it blew the doors clean off oneworld on all the destinations. There were a few ties, where oneworld got close. But overall, no contest. Since IcelandAir doesn't seem hip to join alliances, Star Alliance also couldn't get me to Reykjavik. What a huge freakin' bummer. But between hometown heroes US Airways and my buddies at Air New Zealand, getting to Auckland is a snap.

The bottom line? The oneworld Web site is faster by a long shot. It's less glitchy, too. But Star Alliance wins because its airlines can get me to my destination more quickly and conveniently than oneworld's can. And that's really the big deal.