airline alliances

What kind of experience? All about the same. Just a collection of airlines that agree to some level of code sharing. Been on Star Alliance frequently and One World once, looked and smelled the same.

My nearest airport is a United hub. Because of that, I typically choose Star Alliance carriers in order to accrue frequent flyer miles to my United account. Besides United, I have flown Lufthansa, SAS, Austrian, Croatian, South African and some others. The alliances are essentially just groups of carriers that have reciprocity on some frequent flyer benefits. Sticking with one alliance just means that you can accrue more miles to a particular airline program. I am not aware of any other real benefits beside frequent flyer points and status.

Yes, I have extensive experience with Star Alliance (and to a lesser extent, Skyteam, the other big one), and have been doing pretty much all my international flights on "free" frequent flyer tickets for many years. Many trips to Europe, Asia, Latin America - it's great if you know how to play the game...but being successful requires knowing all the sneaky tricks the airlines use to make it hard to use your miles. Do you have a specific question?

Bill, For the last few years, I've been using Air Canada for flights to Europe and they're part of the Star Alliance. The flights have been good so far, and a couple of times I've been routed to connecting flights with one of the other alliance partners (often Lufthansa). One advantage of booking flights with one of the alliance airlines, is that I only have to check my luggage once at departure, and it's delivered to destination regardless of how many flights are involved. I've been fortunate so far, and they've never "misplaced" my checked luggage. I've thought about registering for Aeroplan or one of the A.C. points systems, but that's something I haven't quite "got around to" yet.

One perk of Star Alliance is that if you have status with them you can pretty much skip waiting in line for security. The one catch is that you must be traveling through an airport that recognizes Star Alliance. Many/most US airports have it, same for Europe if flying out of a terminal with US carriers. For domestic flights, I can leave my house an hour before a flight departs and make it without any problem. You also get to board sooner. This is a bigger deal these days as many more people carry on with the checked bag fees. You are assured of having space for your carry on. Should you check bags, they are free. For domestic flights, I can leave my house an hour before a flight departs and make it without any problem.

Juno has the best advice above: for anything on this topic, get thee to flyertalk.com for the richest source of information available (no disrespect to the Helpline - but the expertise here is about Europe, not the FF game, which is about as complicated).