Airline Alliances 2026: Are Two Airlines Partners? (Star, oneworld, SkyTeam)

Frequent-flyer questions almost always start the same way: “Wait, do these two airlines actually work together?” It matters more than it sounds. If two airlines are partners, you can earn miles on one and spend them on the other, check a bag straight through to your final destination, and rebook for free if a connection goes sideways. If they are not partners, you are flying two unrelated airlines that happen to share a runway, and a missed connection is your problem to solve.

So here is the plain answer for 2026, plus the full member lists and the specific pairings people ask about most.

What “partner” actually means

There are three levels, and they are not the same thing:

• Global alliance. A standing club of airlines, Star Alliance, oneworld, or SkyTeam, that share frequent-flyer earning and redemption, elite status tiers, lounge access, and through-checked baggage across the entire group. This is the broad, automatic version of “partner.”
• Codeshare. A deal between two specific airlines to sell seats on each other’s flights under their own flight numbers. Alliance members codeshare with each other, but two airlines can also codeshare without sharing an alliance. Emirates and Qantas do exactly that.
• Interline. The thinnest version: an agreement to hand off passengers and bags, with no miles or status benefits. Easy to miss, easy to lose.

When someone asks “are these two airlines partners,” they usually mean the first one. So the fastest answer is almost always: which alliance is each airline in?

The three alliances (2026 member lists)

Star Alliance, 26 members (the largest)

Anchored by United, Lufthansa, Air Canada, ANA, Singapore Airlines, and Turkish Airlines.

Two changes worth knowing: ITA Airways (Italy’s flag carrier) joined Star Alliance as Lufthansa took control of it, and Asiana is being absorbed by Korean Air after their 2024 merger: Star Alliance announced in June 2026 that Asiana will exit the alliance, and it is expected to move toward SkyTeam (Korean Air’s alliance) as integration finishes. If you are crediting miles, confirm Asiana’s status at the time you fly.

SkyTeam, 18 members

Anchored by Delta, the Air France-KLM group, Korean Air, and Virgin Atlantic.

Two switches catch people out here. SAS left Star Alliance and joined SkyTeam in 2024, so the old habit of crediting SAS flights to United or Lufthansa no longer works. Virgin Atlantic joined SkyTeam in 2023, so a Virgin flight now earns and redeems Delta SkyMiles and Flying Blue points like any other member. Aeroflot remains a suspended member.

oneworld, 15 members

Anchored by American, British Airways, Qatar Airways, Japan Airlines, Qantas, and Cathay Pacific.

Alaska Airlines joined oneworld in 2021, so it is no longer the independent carrier it used to be, and Hawaiian (acquired by Alaska in 2024) is being folded in. Philippine Airlines is a future member, and S7 Airlines is suspended.

The pairings people actually ask about

Most of the traffic on this question is a handful of specific matchups. Here is the verdict on each:

The Air Canada and Delta question is the most common one, and the answer is no: they sit in rival alliances, so do not expect miles to credit between them. If you are weighing the two carriers for an actual trip, the Air Canada vs Delta comparison covers fares and baggage, and Swiss vs Lufthansa is a useful read if you are deep in the Star Alliance world.

The airlines that partner with no one (or almost no one)

A few big names sit outside the three alliances, but in 2026 “no alliance” no longer means “no partners”:

• Southwest spent decades as the purest no-partner airline, but that ended in 2025. It now holds interline partnerships with Icelandair, Singapore Airlines, ANA, Turkish Airlines, EVA Air, China Airlines, Philippine Airlines, and Condor, so you can book a connecting itinerary across them (though Rapid Rewards points still do not transfer).
• JetBlue is unaligned. Its Northeast Alliance with American ended in 2023 by court order, but it keeps a broad set of individual interline partners, including British Airways, Qatar Airways, Etihad, Aer Lingus, and United.
• Emirates is non-aligned by choice and partners one airline at a time, most notably Qantas, plus codeshares with United and others.
• Ryanair and easyJet are the real no-partner cases now: like most ultra-low-cost carriers, they do not interline or codeshare at all, so a missed connection on separate budget tickets is entirely on you.

This is the practical reason the distinction matters. On a single ticket within one alliance, the airline owes you a rebook when a connection misses. On separate tickets across unaligned carriers, you owe yourself the next fare. If you are stitching a tight connection together, our connection-time tool shows the real minimum at each hub, our hub-by-hub connection ranking covers which airports make tight connections hardest, and same-airline or same-alliance connections are always the safer bet.

How to check any two airlines yourself

1. Find each airline’s alliance. If both show the same alliance, they are partners. Done.
2. If the alliances differ or one is unaligned, check for a codeshare. Search “[airline A] [airline B] codeshare” or look at whether one sells the other’s flights under its own flight number.
3. Confirm mileage earning before you book. Open your frequent-flyer program’s partner earning chart and find the operating airline. Codeshares sometimes earn at a reduced rate or not at all.
4. Check that the connection is on one ticket. Through-checked bags and protected connections only apply within a single booking. Two separate tickets, even on partner airlines, lose that protection.

The shortcut for 90 percent of cases: same alliance equals partners, different alliance equals probably not, and Emirates, JetBlue, and Southwest are the names most likely to break the pattern.