Does anyone know how the oneworld alliance works?
Basically my boss loves to fly American because of his ff level. I would like to get Chase Sapphire and transfer pts to British Airways (on the oneworld alliance, american is not), but the internetz do an awful job explaining how to execute the oneworld alliances and if this is a good idea.
I'm not totally sure I understand your question, but I'll try to help. I'm more familiar with Star Alliance than OneWorld, but I think it all works out about the same. If you have BA Avios miles, you should be able to use them to book travel on any of their partners, which includes AA. Partner awards may or may not be bookable online (you might have to call) but this varies airline to airline and I'm not familiar enough with BA.
The thing is, the number of miles you have to redeem for flights is dependent on the airline who's miles you're using. BA's new Avios system has some pretty crappy redemption rates for a lot of international travel (plus fuel surcharges) but also some pretty good values for domestic AA rewards (that I believe are surcharge-free). So it all depends on what you're trying to do, but the short answer is that yes, you can book AA flights with BA miles and vice versa.