With 41,874 miles in J you can probably earn elite status with this trip on most any airline. So, part of the answer depends on what travel pattern you expect for 2011. What airline will you fly the most, for example? Some benefits of status apply when you fly on any airlines in the alliance, but others are only for that airline's own customers. That, in turn, usually depends on where you're based: is that in the UK, as the LHR start and end of your trip and the spelling "programme" suggest, or somewhere else?

The other part of the equation relates to earning miles for that trip next year to somewhere. On AA, you'd each earn about 58,644 redeemable miles for this trip: base mileage, 1.25 multiplier for business class (another 10,468 miles), and a 25 percent Gold bonus after you pass 16,667 flown miles (6,301 miles). That will get you from Europe to Africa or the Middle East in first class, to anywhere else in the world except the South Pacific* in business class. You can do a similar calculation for the other OW programs using information on their Web sites and then decide. (This calculation is based on Great Circle Mapper distances. It may be slightly low, as it doesn't reflect minimum mileage credit or AA's practice of awarding the Gold bonus for the entire flight in which you qualify.)

____________________________
*If you really want to go there, you could probably add a segment to your RTW or take a short trip in Europe to reach 60,000 miles.