Hi Flyertalkers,

My question is of the type "Which airline mileage programme should I choose".

My home airport would be BRU, a base for Brussels Airlines (Miles & More member). I am already a M&M member, but in the last couple of years I missed FT status (*A silver, 35K miles required) by ~10K miles.

So I was thinking, it might be worth to join another programme, realising that most North American airlines (I looked at UA an US) allow one to get *A silver equivalent status for 25K miles flown in a year.

My travel plans this year are a trip to Alaska (gives me around 15K miles in coach) and a trip to New Zealand towards the end of the year, returning in January 2011 (so around 12K miles for one way). Plus a handful of intra-European flights. This all would be in coach. The long-haul flights would be for leisure, while the intra-European flights would be for business. So far most of my flights have been on *A partners (LH, SN, NZ, UA).
This pattern will likely remain similar in the following years.

Given that I plan to take a couple of very long intercontinental flights a year, I'd like to make these as agreeable as possible. Which means I am mostly after class upgrades, lounge access, higher baggage allowance, priority boarding, etc. Is *A silver status going to bring me closer to any of these? Would it be worth to attempt some mileage runs in order to get to Gold status? And finally, should I stay with M&M, or join another programme?

Cheers,
Zamzon