Hi everyone,

First post here so bear with me if this is in the wrong category.

Currently I am on Star Alliance Gold with Singapore Airlines (KF Gold).

Brief background. I travel around 50k+ miles per year which is enough to get renewal on KF Gold. However, I am quite annoyed with Singapore Airlines as you need to travel 50K miles per year whereas I believe other Star Alliance programs validity last more than a year (like Air Canada?). I also travel almost exclusively on Economy Class (paying my own way and not working for someone else so Business Fares hurt!). I considered trying to get a status match with OneWorld on CX on the Marco Polo Club but never got around to it after they told me that my email attachments was too big as they required all my travel tickets from the past year lol so it kept getting rejected.

So currently in addition to KF Gold, I have been collecting all my OneWorld miles on Qantas (probably not a great idea) as I do travel quite often from SGP-Perth (Qantas) or SGP-HK (CX).

What I been considering is to start collecting all my miles on United Mileage Plus to get Star Gold Equivalent there next year. The only loss I would get is since I travel mostly Singapore Airlines I would lose the 25% bonus factor. However, the advantage I feel is that I can start aggregating more miles in one spot since whenever I want to fly the SGP-NYC route, SIA is incredibly expensive (around 2900+ SGD) whereas Qatar is usually under 2000 SGD (Emirates is very similar in pricing but the Skywards program has no partners...)

So what I want an opinion on is...

(1) Should I start collecting my StarAliance miles on UA Mileage Plus which I can also dump Qatar Airways miles into?

(2) What status do I need on UA to be able to use the lounge in Doha (Oryx Lounge)?

(3) Should I try to start collecting my miles out of Marco Polo Club CX since they have a might higher chance of upgrades and you can actually aim for a higher status on exclusively economy class flights? SQ PPS is only if you buy business class tickets and I only got ever upgraded ONCE on SQ from Econ to Business on Star Gold.

(4) Reason why I have to decide on this somewhat soon is because I am looking to fly to Rio De Janeiro from Singapore. And I was thinking of flying SGP to NYC on Qatar and from NYC to Rio on LAN Chile (nicer planes based on my experience, but I have to collect the LAN Chile miles somewhere, I could fly UA or US or CO but I am a bit afraid of the American Standard of airlines...)

Thanks!