An alliance is worth what its hubs are worth to the journeys you actually make.
Alliance choice is hub choice
All three alliances cover Asia, and none covers it evenly. What differs is which cities you can connect through comfortably, and that depends on which carriers anchor the alliance in the region.
To choose, list the ten journeys you make or expect to make. For each, see which alliance gives you a sane routing: ideally one connection, in a hub where two hours is no hardship. The answer usually shows without any comparison of programme charts.
A hub you dislike is a real cost. Some of Asia’s biggest connecting airports are pleasant to be stuck in and some are not. If your alliance routes you through the wrong one four times a year, that outweighs a slightly better earning rate.
Unaligned carriers
A large share of the most useful flying in Asia is on airlines in no alliance. Several major full-service carriers in the region sit outside all three, and the low-cost sector, which dominates short-haul across Southeast Asia, is almost entirely unaligned.
An alliance strategy cannot cover Asian short-haul the way it covers transatlantic flying. You will fly unaligned carriers on a meaningful fraction of trips and earn nothing, which is fine if you planned for it.
Some unaligned carriers run bilateral partnerships that let you earn or redeem with specific airlines outside any alliance. Check them for the routes you fly often. They change without announcement, so read the operator’s own partner page, not a forum summary.
Earning and redeeming
Earning across an alliance is usually simple: fly a partner, credit the miles to your chosen programme. The rate can be poor on cheap fares.
Redeeming is where the friction is:
- Partner award seats are released differently from an airline’s own, sometimes in smaller numbers.
- They are often findable only by phone or through a specific partner’s site.
- Two programmes in the same alliance can charge very different amounts for the same partner seat.
So your programme choice depends on which member charges least for the flights you want and is least painful to search. That is frequently not the airline you fly most.
How to choose
- Pick the alliance whose hubs suit your routes.
- Concentrate earning in one programme within it, chosen for redemption cost and searchability, not for whose planes you sit on.
- Treat Asian short-haul on unaligned carriers as transport, not progress toward anything.
- Check membership before committing to a multi-year plan. Alliances gain and lose members, and a strategy built on a partnership that ends has an expiry date you did not choose.