I am travelling from heathrow to hong kong and then on to sydney with Cathay Pacific. Then on to Wellington with quantas and then from auckland to cairns with quantas. Lastly travelling back from cairns to heathrow, via hong kong with cathay pacfic. All this has been booked in economy - as cheap as possible! It is on a quantas deal. I do travel a bit for work, but not very much and tend to be european flights only.

Which frequent flyer scheme should I join? And we were hoping that we might be able to use the points to upgrade at least one of the international sectors with Cathay Pacfic - is this going to be possible? Can we get into some lounges by doing this?

Help - I am completely out of my depth and it seems like you all have a huge amount of knowledge that i am hoping to tap into. I'd like to take advantage of the trip of a lifetime and make the most of it.