I'll give you South America, but what alliance doesn't have issues in the Middle East? SV and MEA aren't gems, but they are coming on board. Similarly, everybody's weak in India until the mess that's the subject of this thread gets sorted. Asia? Seriously? You want to say ST has poor coverage in Asia? KE, CI (soon), CZ, MU, VN plus DL's hub at NRT that's been retained from NW and that's poor coverage? (GA's on their way, too.) If you frequently need to get to HKG or SIN, then CX or SQ are obviously going to be better, but ST is not lacking in Asia. As to the US, the loss of CO didn't hurt things much at all. Again, maybe if you need to get to certain CO-heavy destinations, but DL's network beats the pants off of AA's.

I think ST's major weakness is Australia and New Zealand. There's no way to travel between them or within them on ST, and until GA comes on board, you've got to stay way north and then cut roughly due south to get there. I had hopes that DL could lure VA into the alliance, but as they tie up with EY and NZ and SQ, it starts to look more and more like they want to play the field.

There's some debate about how much SkyTrax's opinion should be trusted.

DL's upgrade policy is pretty awful. I think the redemption issue is more that there's no carrier in the alliance that has a comprehensive award booking engine that makes it easy to check inventory.

Flat beds situation is changing. GA has them, and DL is putting their first refit 763 with flat beds into service tonight on ATL-MAN. The 744s are supposed to be going in, soon, too. AZ is using flat beds that are getting rave reviews. KE's new flat beds are apparently very good, and their A380s have a ton of them. The problem is really AF/KL, who've proved strangely resistant to flat beds.