But these alliances were formed mainly to link airline flight systems so passengers could book flights to more destinations.
Airlines say code-share agreements provide one-stop shopping for customers and improve the ease of travel by linking airlines' route systems.
Three groups -- Star, SkyTeam and Oneworld -- have carved up the globe, linking airlines in the United States, Europe and Asia into giant networks that can carry passengers from Alpina, Mich., to Brussels, or from Toulouse, France, to Savannah, Ga.
Banks, which offer cards linked to airline rewards programs, are the primary buyers of airline miles.
Industries directly linked to airline travel -- hotels, rental cars, aircraft manufacturing, theme parks, airport restaurants -- also suffered.
More than half of all miles are earned on the ground, notably on credit cards linked to airlines' programmes or on telephone calls.
If the answer is no, you could use some remedial mile-accumulation lessons: Use credit or charge cards linked to airlines' frequent flier programs instead of a check to pay for big-ticket items.
Linking an airline or tourist board to a film's promotional campaign is a clearer choice of partner than many other case studies.
In the field of travel, attaching metadata to everything makes it possible to link up airline schedules, car rental and hotel bookings.If this sounds eerily similar to the kind of thing a human travel agent used to do in the days before the non-semantic web almost killed his profession, that is exactly what Gregg Brockway has in mind.
C1 Ticket Agent Linked to Airline Orbitz, the airline-owned online travel agent, will begin booking tickets directly in the reservation system of American Airlines, bypassing the systems that handle nearly all of the bookings by other travel agencies.
In the front of the plane, though, it's exactly the opposite: First-class dishes often approach haute restaurant quality as more prominent chefs and hotels link with airlines to create in-flight meals.
