Originally Posted by Jasper2009

You´re right that miles earned through CCs etc. do not count for status.

Basically there are status miles (which usually can only be generated by flying) and award/redeemable miles. Status miles determine your status and are reset to 0 at the end of each year, award miles can be redeemed for flights etc. When you take a flight you usually earn the same amount of status and award miles. The only exception to this is "Elite bonus miles" which depends on the FFP, e.g. LH M&M status members earn a 25% miles bonus that both counts as status and award miles, while Aeroplan status members earn 25%-100% extra award miles (bonus doesn´t count towards status), CO bonus miles also don´t count as status miles.

Regarding your question: In order to earn any (meaningful) status, you´ll have to choose between KE and Star Alliance carriers. (IMO, SkyTeam is an overall much inferior alliance, so I´d go with *A)

Another problem you have: If you mainly fly discounted or even regular economy fares (vs. full fare economy which is ridiculously expensive), you´ll often earn zero miles when flying SQ or a only 50%-70% with SQ/OZ. If you fly CO/US/AC you´ll earn 1ßß% miles on all int´l flights regardless of booking class.

If I were you, I´d go for AC/Aeroplan:

- Elite (= *A Gold) status only requires 35k status miles
- lounge access included (with CO you can´t use the lounges on domestic/transborder flights in the US)
- excellent redemption rates (do a search for "mini-RTW" in the AC forum), generally more generous stopover / routing rules
- more opportunities to earn award miles living in Canada (CC etc.)
- upgrade credits (they´re currently changing from paper certs to e-upgrades, so the exact details for next year haven´t been released yet), generally you can upgrade 4 days before departure when travelling in discounted economy on int´l routes (if there are seats available) or you can confirm seats at time of booking when you buy more expensive fares (CO/UA only offers SWUs = int´l upgrades to their top tier members). The advantage of CO/UA is that you can also upgrade using miles, which you can´t on AC (at least not at the moment), but I usually don´t consider using miles for upgrades a good investment.

Anyhow, AP is most beneficial if you actually fly AC due to the upgrades (which can only be used on AC operated flights) and the miles bonus (50% for Es on AC/UA/CO operated flights and 25% on some other carriers, but not SQ).