You live in SBA.

SBA is presently served by:

Horizon (QX) which is Alaska's (AS) "commuter carrier"
American Eagle
United Express
USAirways Express
Delta Connection

I would presume that apart from your international travel, you would prefer to fly from SBA, and not LAX.

You travel to France (CDG) 3 to 7 times a year. You do this from LAX because there are non-stop flights. These flights are available on Air Tahiti Nui (TN) and on Air France (AF).

TN has no partners as far as I understand things; their partnership with AA is only for redemption (Use AA miles on TN). I am not sure what happened to their partnership with Northwest now that NW is a part of Delta. TN's own program has no partners.

AF carries one warning for you if you travel in coach/economy on their 777's: Very soon these will be converted from 9-across seating to 10-across seating. So if you thought the seats were narrow before...
Citation: http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Air..._777-300_C.php

AF's program is Flying Blue and has both Delta and Alaska/Horizon as partners

P.S. If you work in the Oil business, consider joining Flying Blue Petroleum

Any other carrier will require a change of planes to get to France, BUT there is the possibility now of flying SBA to CDG via Salt Lake City on Delta/Delta Connection. The only other possible code-share I can see being possible is AS/QX to Seattle and then AF to CDG from there.

Delta Skymiles has Alaska/Horizon and also all the SkyTeam Airlines as partners

Alaska Mileage Plan has DL *and* AA as partners, along with AF, British Airways, KLM, LAN Chile and others:
http://www.alaskaair.com/as/mileagep...rs_Airline.asp

You might want to seriously look at the AS program since it is really broad, but your status on AS will not necessarily translate to upgrades, etc. on AF.

You do not say what class you will travel in, and this is really an important piece of info as above with the AF 777's. Also, are you actually going to Paris, or is another part of France your actual destination?

Welcome to FT! This can be alot of fun and can be very rewarding. My two free tickets on the Air France Concorde and numerous flights at the front of the plane are/were just some of the wonderful experiences I have had while playing these games.