MilesBuzz! - Best airline program west - Europe - East travel

I am looking for an airline to select for my travel needs, I am much more intrested in getting upgrades, 1st class check-in and airport louges access than free trips.

The problem is that I mostly fly intercontinental trips from Italy to US (with some US domestic segment)about 4 - 5 times a year and from Italy to Japan/HK about 3 - 4 times.

So far I selected the Sky Team with Delta silver elite status.

I enjoy the medallion priority at check-in and pre-boarding, but when I fly Air France to Japan (I have to select this carrier to Japan 'cause Alitalia is ALWAYS booked) I lost all my privileges (they do not even accept a Crown Lounge member into their lounge in Paris - but I recently discovered that the alitalia louge at paris cdg accept silver elite even without an alitalia tiket).

And, of course, upgrading with Delta is out of question for the class ticket I buy (the upgradable fare for intercontinental flight is far too high).

Now I have some collegues that claims to be upgraded almost automatically as they simply approach the airport!

Do you have any suggestion? May be lufthansa with star alliance(but usually european carriers are not so generous on the miles)

Thank-you

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by angmax:
Now I have some collegues that claims to be upgraded almost automatically as they simply approach the airport! </font>

Do any of your colleagues also run fantasy airlines?

Seriously -- very high yield passengers can and are upgraded, all the more so when a flight is overbooked.

You better try the airline/program's specific forums for answers to some of your questions. Since the questions are pretty specific, I think the search feature should be able to answer at least some.

Best deal I've seen is www.flights.com (http://www.flights.com) , which I picked up in here somewhere. But, I have never used them. Use the business class option.