Flying from VIE, I would initially recommend BMI diamond club. Reasonably easy to get to *Gold (16k miles gets you silver, another 38k beyond gets *G) and also has family plan feature to combine miles of up to 8 family members (though family miles dont count to status, they really add up quick for redemption). Lounge access as *G is fairly easy across the *A footprint with *Gold.

Couple of caveats:

A merger of BMI diamond and LH's Miles and More is imminent and most feel it will happen sometime next year. In the past, when Miles and More acquired other FF plans (Swiss/austrian etc), they would grant a 2 year extension of *gold into miles/more senator, but past actions dont guarantee future actions by LH. If you can get gold relatively quickly, then this may be the way to go. Going forward, being based in VIE, Miles and More could be a very practical FF program.

BMI redemptions currently are quite attractive. They offer Miles + Cash redemption to really make redemptions cost and miles effective.

BMI is generous in miles crediting. Business class fares miles usually have a 2x multiplier, and they have minimum miles for any leg (in other words, even though munich to nuremburg is only about 110 mile flight, they credit 300 or 600 miles, depending on class.

I usually fly biz class fares and find their crediting very attractive and thats what lured me to their scheme.

It only took me 2 transatlantic runs this year to gain gold status


Hopefully my lengthy answer helped.