Thanks all for the replies. I haven't got a revenue flight on a Star carrier until early March, and won't have an upgrade opportunity until likely early April, so will have to wait a bit to see what happens. I'm still wavering on which program to post to as I want to try to get Star Gold for next, but I am also burning through miles for flights and using whichever carrier is cheapest so I will likely be short of 35k on AC this year. I'm still pondering Aegean as the latest reports on the Aegean threads say that Star Gold status is good for 3 years and is only 19K miles. I am still a little uncomfortable with the thought of losing that status for next year, though I am unwilling to give AC extra revenue (over cheapest fare, whether Y of J) as I have in the past. There should be some interesting times ahead for quite a few of us!

SH makes a very good point re: the eupgrades. I expect that the system roll-out in March will cough up a number of different problems, AC's IT being what it is.